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FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS, 

LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE, IN CANDIDACY FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

(DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY) 



Ifl 



BY 
WALTER FLAVIUS McCALEB 



NEW YORK 

DoOD, /BbeaD anJ> Gompanis 

1903 



The Aaron Burr Conspiracy 



The ^aron Burr 
Conspiracy 



A History largely from original and 
h' ;herto unused sources 



By 

Walter Flavius McCaleb, A.M., Ph.D. 

Fellow in the Texas State Historical Association 

Sometime Fellow in History in the 

University of Chicago 



t 



New York 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1903 



Copyright, 1903, by 
Dodd, Mead and Company 



First Edition, published 
April, 1903 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK. 



TO 

HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLTZ 

Teacher and Friend 



Preface 



FOR a century the conspiracy, of Aaron Burr has 
been a puzzHng theme. Apart from the distin- 
guished figures that move across its stage, the 
nature of the enterprise from its very extravagance 
must always engage the attention of those who care 
to know something of the United States in its Heroic 
Age. 

The conspiracy was of much wider and deeper origin 
than has been usually supposed, and the conditions 
which gave rise to it, as well as the events with which 
it was vitally connected, have received scant treatment 
from historians. Social and political upheavals are not 
growths of a night, but are the results of the workings 
of real and definite causes which are traceable in every 
case and susceptible of some degree of analysis. Burr's 
project is no exception to this general law. And hap- 
pily we are now far enough removed from his time to 
see more clearly the perspective of events, and to 
measure with more certainty the motives and conduct 
of men. 

In the discussion of the subject writers have in nearly 
every case failed to distinguish between the conspiracy 
and Aaron Burr — in other words, they have attempted 



Vll 



VIU 



PREFACE 



to explain it through the character of Burr himself, 
a procedure which is fundamentally erroneous. Burr's 
character was apparently never more seriously involved, 
and never reflected more disastrously upon the con- 
spiracy, than in the correspondence of Merry and Yrujo 
■ — the ministers respectively of Great Britain and Spain 
— to whom he ostensibly disclosed his designs. If the 
revelations of the ministers could be accepted at their 
face value, treason was in Burr's mind, and the separa- 
tion of the West from the Union was his plot, open 
and avowed. However, viewing the correspondence 
as a whole, in conjunction with other facts which 
cannot here be discussed, it appears certain that Burr's 
intrigue with Merry and Yrujo w^as but a consummate 
piece of imposture. In order to secure funds for the 
carrying out of his expedition against Mexico, Burr 
resorted to the expedient of playing on the hatred of the 
European powers for the American Republic. Could 
they be brought to contribute moneys to aid in the 
sundering of the States? Burr thought so, and to 
secure the sum he conceived to be necessary for his 
purposes he never scrupled at discoursing of treasons, 
although at the moment every step he was taking 
looked toward an invasion of the Spanish territories. 
No weight can be placed upon Merry's and Yrujo's 
letters as concerns the nature of the conspiracy, except 
indeed in a negative sense ; and I say this with all defer- 
ence to Mr. Henry Adams and those who have laid so 
much stress on these manuscripts, maintaining that they 



PREFACE IX 



lay bare the heart of the conspiracy. The heart of the 
conspiracy, however, was far removed from any com- 
munication of Burr's. The conspiracy was an affection 
of society — Burr was but a member of that society, an 
agent. It follows that if the nature of the conspiracy 
is to be disclosed, it can only be through an examination 
into the state of that society whose social, political, and 
traditional affiliations gave rise to it. This is basic. 
That the ideas of Burr, whatever they may have been, 
necessarily betray the secret of the movement, cannot 
be successfully maintained. But that the prevailing 
impression of Burr's character lent weight to the impu- 
tation of treason cannot be doubted ; nor more can it 
be doubted that the isolation of the West, together with 
the ignorance of the East concerning the pioneers 
who built their log cabins in the wilderness beyond the 
Alleghany Mountains, tended to distort extraordinarily 
the affair in the public mind. What were the ideas, 
then, prevailing in the Western country? Was there 
a contingent that plotted disunion ? Was there a party 
that clamored loudly for war against whatever power 
insulted the Republic? Of the first there is no trace 
worth considering; of the latter there is evidence in 
abundance. The spirit of the Westerners is proclaimed 
in no uncertain voice, and if its tone could have been 
mistaken in 1806, there was no doubting its meaning in 
18 12, when, in spite of the opposition of New England, 
the Second War with Great Britain was forced. 
And yet this was done by the very men upon whom 



PREFACE 



Burr had counted, and the greatest leaders in that 
struggle had been his associates. If we look more 
closely we shall see, what has been but too timidly sug- 
gested, that it was the West and South that took up the 
burden of the Republic when it had well nigh wearied 
of the load. 

As for the conspiracy, patriotism was but one of its 
elements. For him who reads the secret of the Anglo- 
Saxon character, there is epitomized in the movement 
the whole course of the race that threw down the bul- 
warks of Rome, that terrorized Europe in a Viking's 
fleet, that conquered the Western World, and that looks 
confidently forward to the time when the struggle for 
universal supremacy shall test its powers. Expansion 
— conquest — was the keynote of the conspiracy ; — it is 
the keynote of the history of the race. 

This narrative of the conspiracy of Aaron Burr has 
been in large part written from original and hitherto 
unused sources of information. It must not be thought, 
however, that the work of scholars in this field has 
been ignored ; on the contrary, I have made much use 
of it, but never intentionally without due credit 
either in text or notes. I have not found it expedient, 
however, to point out even the most glaring anachro- 
nisms in many of the secondary narratives which treat 
of the conspiracy ; much less have I attempted to indi- 
cate divergences of opinion — and there are divergences 
as wide as misdemeanor is from treason. 

In the endeavor to make this study exhaustive much 



PREFACE xi 



time has been expended in searching for new data. 
Brief mention must therefore be made of the various 
sources which have been consulted, and of the materials 
exploited. 

In 1896 documents relating to the conspiracy were 
discovered in the Bexar Archives at San Antonio, the 
Spanish capital of the Province of Texas. From 
early in the eighteenth century, much of the correspond- 
ence of the provincial Governors with the Captains- 
General and Viceroys of Mexico found lodgment in the 
musty files of the archives of the province. It is need- 
less to say that they contain many manuscripts which 
are concerned with the westward growth of the 
United States and with the uninterrupted conflict which 
was waged with the retreating civilization of Spain. The 
views of the officers of Carlos IV. in that quarter as 
to the nature of the conspiracy are illuminating. They 
rightly classed it as a manifestation of the restless, 
encroaching activity of the nation which fate had 
placed on their borders. 

The archives of the State of Texas contain materials 
dating from the Spanish regime and are of value on 
more than one doubtful point. 

The Viceroyalty of Mexico on account of the promi- 
nent position it held among the Spanish colonies became 
the great center for the accumulation of official corre- 
spondence; and the treasure of manuscripts now con- 
tained in the Archivo General de Mexico, Mexico City, 
is of inestimable value to the history of the New 



xii PREFACE 



World, and in an almost equal measure to that of 
Europe. Although we have ignored as far as possible 
the presence of the Spanish civilization in the affairs of 
America, and have remained blind to the tremendous 
formative and directive influence which it has exerted 
on the course of our national growth, it is from this 
collection that our own history is to be enriched and 
brought nearer to truth. The Departments of Marine, 
War, and the Provinces, together with the correspond- 
ence which passed between the Viceroys of New Spain 
and the home Government deserve special mention. In 
the latter collection are letters from Viceroy Jose de 
Iturrigaray to Don Pedro Cevallos, then Minister of 
State, which go a long way toward explaining the con- 
duct of General James Wilkinson at the crisis on the 
Sabine in November, 1806. The cloudy transactions 
which resulted in the lamentable Neutral Ground 
Treaty and in the over- vaunted defeat of Burr are 
somewhat cleared of the mist which has enshrouded 
them. 

The Mississippi Valley also proved a fruitful field 
for research. New Orleans was the focus for the vari- 
ous lines of forces which mingled in the conspiracy: 
it was the home of the Creoles who are supposed to 
have been at the heart of the plot ; it was the place, if 
we follow generally accepted conclusions, specially de- 
signed by the adventurers for plunder; and it had the 
unenviable distinction to be subjected for two months 
to the tyranny of General Wilkinson. In its City Hall 



PREFACE xlli 



are files of the Moniteur de la Louisiane and of the 
Orleans Gazette, both of which newspapers were pub- 
Hshed contemporaneously with the conspiracy. The 
former was the organ of the Creole population, the 
latter represented the Americans proper, while both 
contain, apart from valuable documentary evidence, a 
trustworthy reflection of the public mind of the time. 
It is needless to say that much new light is shed on 
that dark chapter in the history of the conspiracy which 
is concerned with the attitude of the native Louisianians 
toward Burr, and with Wilkinson's reign of terror in 
the capital of Orleans. The official manuscript Journal 
of W. C. C. Claiborne, the first Governor of the Terri- 
tory, preserved in the old Tulane Law Library, is of 
exceeding interest, containing as it does much of his 
correspondence with the National Government, Wilkin- 
son, and others. 

Colonel R. T. Durrett of Louisville has in his splen- 
did library a file of the Palladium, an independent 
newspaper published at Frankfort, Kentucky, and 
edited by William Hunter. In it are voiced the early 
controversies that rent Kentucky society, which has 
always been regarded as rife with disaffection. Most 
of the sensational articles concerning Burr, Wilkinson, 
and the Spanish Association, which appeared in the 
Western World, an incendiary newspaper established 
at Frankfort in July, 1806, were reprinted in the 
Palladium. Likewise a full account is given of the 
two arraignments of Burr in Kentucky. Another im- 



XIV PREFACE 



portant source is the Lexington Gazette — a file of which 
is preserved in the Lexington PubHc Library — one of 
the most influential journals of the early West. Its 
columns, like those of the Palladium, were devoted to 
combating the inflammatory reports which appeared 
weekly in the Western World, and to asserting the 
patriotism of the frontiersmen. 

The letters cited from the Andrew Jackson MS S. are 
of moment, for the relations which subsisted between 
Jackson and Burr have been so distorted and amplified 
that any approximation to the truth is to be welcomed. 
I am obliged to Messrs. Woodbury and Gist Blair for 
transcripts of the original documents. 

The Henry Clay MSS. and the Breckenridge Letters 
were opened to my inspection, and it is a pleasure to 
express my gratitude to Thomas Clay, Esq., and to 
Colonel W. C. P. Breckenridge for their respective 
services in this connection. 

The Jefferson and Madison MSS. have been ex- 
amined with profit. Moreover, the Department of 
State at Washington, contains a notable volume entitled 
"Letters in Relation to Burr's Conspiracy," the con- 
tents of which, so far as I can ascertain, have never been 
made public. The letters are from various sources, and 
many of them are extremely significant, serving to 
make clearer the whole view of the conspiracy, espe- 
cially the latter phase of it centering in the trial at 
Richmond. 

That Burr was himself a mapmaker is known, but 



PREFACE XV 



that maps exhibiting the geography of his Western 
enterprise were in existence had hardly been suspected. 
There are, however, three such maps in the possession 
of Mrs. Thomas C. Wordin. They were inherited from 
her grandfather, Dr. John Cummins, who hved on the 
Bayou Pierre in Mississippi Territory where Burr's 
expedition collapsed. Dr. Cummins indorsed for Burr 
to a considerable extent, which proved his attachment ; 
— and no doubt when the conspirator was under trial 
in the Territory these tell-tale documents were turned 
over to one who could be trusted to secrete them. The 
maps are of preeminent significance, illustrating, as 
they undoubtedly do, the outlines of Burr's project. To 
distinguish, Map No. i (measuring thirty-nine inches 
by thirty-two) shows the lower region of the Missis- 
sippi River with Natchez, New Orleans, and the 
Washita lands, also New Mexico and Mexico down to 
[Yucatan. Map No. 2 is an admiralty chart ( twenty-three 
inches by nineteen) and gives with astonishing minute- 
ness a survey of the Gulf coast from New Orleans to 
Campeche. Islands, bars, and inlets are recorded, and 
soundings are given. The chart is beautifully executed 
on paper bearing the watermark of 1801. Map No. 3, 
which is here reproduced, measures in the original 
forty-five inches by nineteen. It exhibits in some of its 
details with startling correctness that section of Mexico 
lying between Vera Cruz on the east and Mexico City 
on the west. The minutiae into which these maps de- 
scend display a knowledge which could have been 



XVI PREFACE 

obtained only from Spanish sources; and this opinion 
is reenforced by the fact that the longitude in one case 
is reckoned from Cadiz. On the whole, these docu- 
ments, the authenticity of which is indubitable, form a 
strong link in the chain of evidence. 

The correspondence of Anthony Merry, mentioned 
above, with whom Burr, while yet Vice-President, 
opened his intrigue, has been carefully examined. I had 
hoped also to find in the British Archives traces of 
Merry's correspondence with Burr in 1808, but my 
endeavors and the efforts of Mr. Hubert Hall of the 
Public Record Office were without result. Transcripts 
of Yrujo's correspondence with his home Government 
concerning Burr's disclosures to him have been de- 
posited by Mr. Adams in the State Department 
Archives at Washington, and students ought to appre- 
ciate such a display of good will and scholarly spirit. 

The reports of Merry and Yrujo reveal an astonish- 
ing audacity of design on the part of the conspirators. 
While they failed in their main purpose of obtaining 
needed moneys from King George and Don Carlos, 
they succeeded in hoodwinking both Merry and Yrujo. 
Here, as indicated above, there arises between Mr. 
Adams and myself a diversity of opinion which only 
serves to illustrate what different conclusions may be 
drawn from the same materials, taken in conjunction 
with additional facts. In this connection it is a pleasure 
to say that, while I have often had cause to disagree 
with Mr. Adams, he has been of inestimable service to 



PREFACE xvli 

me not only because of his masterly method and the 
inspiration derived from following his work, but be- 
cause he has said practically the last word on the con- 
spiracy in its classic form, which teaches that it was 
double-natured — treasonable and filibustering. 

Among those to whom I am under obligations and to 
whom I wish in this place to express my gratitude are : 
Senor Mariscal, Vice-President of the Republic of 
Mexico, and General Clayton, Ambassador to Mexico, 
through whose cooperation I was granted the freest 
access to the Mexican Archives; Mr. William Beer, 
librarian of the Howard Memorial Library of New 
Orleans; Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, who opened 
to me his rare collection of Western Americana; 
Dr. David J. Hill, Assistant Secretary of State; the 
Honorable Joseph H. Choate, Ambassador to the Court 
of St. James, whose note to the British Foreign Office 
so much facilitated my researches ; Mr. Villiers of the 
Foreign Office, and Mr. Hubert Hall of the Public 
Record Office, whose uniform courtesy cannot be for- 
gotten ; and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Wordin through 
whose kindness the Burr maps are for the first time 
called to the notice of the public. 

I have specially to acknowledge the services of Pro- 
fessor George P. Garrison, who first encouraged me 
in the prosecution of the work, and who kindly read 
the MS. Mr. John P. Weisenhagen, Dr. and Mrs. 
William B. Seeley, Professor Francis W. Shepardson, 
and Professor Frederick J. Turner have in more than 



xvlii PREFACE 

one way left me indebted to them. My hearty thanks 
are due to Professor J. FrankHn Jameson for his criti- 
cal reading of the MS. and for his suggestions. To 
Dr. Louis H. Gray and Mr. C. C. Whinery I am grate- 
ful for corrections made in the proof. I wish also to 
thank my publishers for their readiness to comply with 
suggestions and for their constant courtesy. 

Lastly, if the book has any merit, it is largely due 
to Idealie Marie McCaleb, whose interest in it sprang 
up under peculiar circumstances^ whose labors on it 
were many-natured, and whose faith in it has never 
wavered. 

Walter Flavius McCaleb. 
Washington Square, March 25, 1903. 



Contents 



Chapter Page 

I. A Brief Survey of the Period ... i 

11. Burr's Tour of the West i6 

III. Burr's Intrigues 41 

IV. Plans and Preparations 'j^ 

V. The Crisis on the Frontier .... 105 

y 

VI. Wilkinson's Duplicity 136 

VII. Two Kentucky Arraignments . . .172 

VIII. Wilkinson in New Orleans . . . 201 

IX. The Expedition 242 

X. Burr's Trial in Mississippi . . . .271 

XI. Measures in Washington .... 285 

XII. The Trial at Richmond 310 

XIII. The Last Years 3^3 



XIX 



The Aaron Burr 
Conspiracy 

CHAPTER I. 
A Brief Survey of the Period 

THE Conspiracy of Aaron Burr was preemi- 
nently a revolutionary product, receiving its 
inspiration from that unprecedented period of 
upheaval which began with the Revolution of 1776, its 
impelling force from the character of the American 
pioneer, its license from the disturbed condition of 
affairs existing in the New World. It is therefore nec- 
essary, in order correctly to view the movement, to 
devote a few words to a general survey of contempo- 
raneous history, with especial regard to the West and 
the Spanish-American colonies. 

America was in the Eighteenth Century, as now, 
inseparably bound up with Europe, the thought and 
feeling of the one instantly finding response in the 
other; so the flame of war for larger liberty, kindled 
first on the shores of America, was destined to lose 
itself in the vastness of the general conflagration. The 
doctrines set forth in the Declaration of Independence 
struck at the root of existing European institutions— 



2 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

among which were privileged orders — and denied the 
divine right of kings. The phrase that all men are 
created equal lent overwhelming impetus to the on- 
coming French Revolution, and made possible the free- 
dom of the wretched colonies of Spain in the Western 
World. The news of the rising in Europe thrilled the 
Thirteen Colonies which had been recently at war for 
their rights. The tricolor and the cockade became 
almost national emblems, while the mass of the people, 
whom the Constitution had sought in a measure to ex- 
clude from power, came to feel their weight in the affairs 
of the nation. In the Spanish- American provinces, be- 
cause of the strenuous measures resorted to by the au- 
thorities, the force of the Revolution was much abated ; 
but in spite of the Holy Inquisition the seditious doc- 
trines of the French enthusiasts were disseminated 
among the natives.^ Presently there were some who, 
brooding over the condition of their country, began to 
direct stirring pamphlets against the iniquities of the 
Spanish Government, and to plot for its disruption.^ 
Summary and bloody were the proceedings of the au- 
thorities against the conspirators, but nothing could 
stay the spread of the maxims of liberty and equality 
set in motion by the great Revolution, although at the 
moment its crimes appalled the world. 

If we examine into the internal conditions of the 
colonial establishments of Spain we shall see that 
everything was ripe for disunion and rebellion. A 

*Alaman's Historia de Mexico, i., 127. 

'Restrepo's Historia de la Revolucion de Nueva Granada, 
I, 55. 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 3 

writer in BeWs Messenger, an influential journal of the 
day, said that the Spanish Colonies supported the 
parent as Anchises of old was supported by his chil- 
dren; but that they had become tired of the weight 
and cared not how soon the burden was shuffled off. 
The condition of affairs in many parts was indeed 
deplorable, for the system of government which Spain 
bound upon her colonies was antiquated and ill ad- 
justed to the progress and necessities of the time. 
Everywhere absolutism, in Church and State, pressed 
the superstitious natives from one stage of degrada- 
tion to a lower. Almost three centuries of Span- 
ish rule in the Americas passed before the gross 
injustices in the prevailing order of things appealed to 
men with a force not to be repressed. Once more the 
masses were arrayed against privileged classes, and the 
fury of the Mexicans with their pikes at Guanajuato 
was not unlike that of the "sans-culottes" which over- 
turned the Bastille and inspired the Terror. 

The United States, through social and commercial 
relations, knew of the insurrections in the Spanish 
Americas and watched the political situation with keen 
and lively interest. This was but natural, for senti- 
mentalism and revolutionary intoxication completely 
possessed the American mind. It was a radical regime 
that bore Thomas Jefferson in triumph. Aristocracy 
was spurned ; the oligarchy of our early national period 
was rudely cast off, while in its place was installed 
virile, confident democracy. The sympathy of the 
young Republic for the French people in their struggle 
against the tyranny of Europe was unquestioned; in- 



4 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

deed, tyranny in any quarter excited them to reprobate 
the existence of kings. 

It was in the West that this madness reached its 
height. The course of poHtical events had told mightily 
in molding the character of the Westerners. Their 
nearest neighbors were the Spaniards in Louisiana, and 
these, through repressive laws and encroachments, had 
lost no opportunity to make life in the Mississippi 
Valley unendurable. The States lying to the east of 
the Alleghanies, the original Union, contributed much 
in a negative way to estrange the Western settlements 
by neglecting and ignoring their interests. When Spain 
confiscated property on the Mississippi the Westerners 
blazed with indignation; and yet Congress seriously 
considered a treaty which would have closed the Mis- 
sissippi to their commerce for twenty-five years. Thus 
outraged, the pioneers expressed their feelings through 
outspoken petitions to the Assembly of Virginia and to 
Congress. Their rights, they declared, were considered 
but subsidies to be traded for commercial concessions 
to the East; they had no market for their corn and 
pork ; their goods were appropriated ; the Indians wxre 
sent against them : they would end the tyranny by 
expelling the enemy from Louisiana ! 

There followed from 1787 a decade full of confu- 
sion and intrigues. The most conspicuous movement 
was known as the Spanish Association, or Conspiracy, 
whose vital principle comprehended the incorporation 
of the West with the possessions of Spain. This, how- 
ever, played an insignificant part in the course of 
events, for the people instinctively recoiled at the 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 5 

thought of becoming subject to a nation and a civihza- 
.tion they loathed. In reahty it has never been shown 
that the movement embraced more than a few pohti- 
cians and pensioners of Spain, of whom James Wilkin- 
son was the chief, not only in point of service, but in 
talents. The Spanish movement can not have had, 
from the nature of things, roots that went deep in 
society — the Westerners were bound to the States by 
unseverable ties of blood and tradition. 

When France rose against England and Spain, 
she had the sympathies of the Americans, who were 
even ready to take up arms in her behalf. Indeed, 
so tremendous was the force brought to bear on the 
Government that President Washington hardly with- 
stood it ; even the devotion of the people to him seemed 
for a time irretrievably lost. At such a moment 
(1793) Genet, the French Minister, landed in America. 
Taking advantage of the tide of feeling he equipped 
privateers, harassed the Government and launched a 
project for the invasion of the Spanish Possessions 
from our Western States. Louisiana and the Floridas 
were to be taken and, perhaps, Mexico.^ During the 
summer Genet pushed his Louisiana expedition, which 
was forming in the West under the leadership of 
George Rogers Clark. Upon receiving notice to the 
effect that two hundred and fifty men were actually 
collected in that quarter, Thomas Jefferson, then Secre- 
tary of State, appealed to Governor Shelby of Ken- 
tucky for information. The Governor admitted the 

^See Frederick J. Turner, in American Historical Review, 
July, 1898. 



6 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

presence of French revolutionists, and that Clark had 
received a commission to equip an army which had for 
its object the clearing of the Mississippi of the Span- 
iards; but he said that he was powerless to interfere, 
inasmuch as every citizen had a right to leave the 
State, if he pleased, and to take with him arms and 
ammunition. 

This survey of events is necessary to us if we 
are rightly to interpret the Aaron Burr Conspiracy. It 
is only by studying the character of the people, the 
conditions under which they lived, and the nature of 
their environment that we can comprehend their feel- 
ings and their actions. But why should the West have 
been eager to wage a war against a neighboring power? 
Ostensibly it was a movement concerted with France 
against the enemies of humanity and liberty. There was 
still alive in the wilds of the New World something of 
the sentimentalism which had animated the best period 
of the great Revolution ; and some of it, indeed, was 
destined to remain in the American breast to find its 
fruition in a struggle for the freedom of Cuba, which 
had felt for four centuries the leaden weight of medise- 
valism. But sympathy for the oppressed is too often 
associated with — indeed, too often conceals — an in- 
stinct which rises anew with every generation of 
Anglo-Saxons. In the mind of the Westerners, close- 
linked with their hatred of Spain for her insolence on 
the one hand and her oppression on the other, came 
the longing for her fabulous riches, which they meant 
sooner or later to take for themselves. 

When the patience of the trans- Alleghany settlers 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 7 

had been well-nigh outworn, Jay's Treaty, coupled 
with the victories of ''Mad Anthony" Wayne over the 
Indians, brought relief to the Northwest, while the 
treaty which Pinckney negotiated at Madrid (1795) 
pacified the South and West. Spain at last recognized 
the claim of the United States to the free navigation of 
the Mississippi and granted under certain conditions 
the right of depositing goods in New Orleans. This 
dropping of the bars to commercial expansion proved 
a great stimulus to emigration; and by the end 
of the century the Westerners, numbering 400,000 
souls, were scattered along the Great Lakes, were 
gazing across the Mississippi, and were crowding the 
boundary lines of the Floridas. Indeed, no longer were 
boundaries sufficient to stay their progress — many 
pushed into Missouri and Louisiana ; but for the present 
the goal toward which all eyes were turned was the 
possession of New Orleans and the Mississippi. 

"At the beginning of the nineteenth century," says 
Roosevelt,^ '*the settlers on the Western waters recognized 
in Spain their natural enemy, because she was the power 
which held the South and the west bank of the Missis- 
sippi. They would have transferred their hostility to 
any other power which fell heir to her possessions, for 
these possessions they were bound one day to make 
their own." 

Such an opinion was shared in Europe. The French 
Ambassador, writing to his home Government from 
Madrid, said:^ — 

^Roosevelt's Winning of the West, iv,, 254. 
^American State Papers, x., 185. 



8 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

''The Cabinet of Madrid thinks it has the greatest in- 
terests not to open the Mississippi to the Americans, and 
to disgust them from making estabHshments on that river, 
as they would not delay to possess themselves of the 
commerce of New Orleans and Mexico, whatever impedi- 
ments should be opposed to their progress, and that they 
would become neighbors the more dangerous to Spain — 
as, even in their present weakness, they conceive vast 
projects for the conquest of the western shore of the 
Mississippi." 

With the opening of the Nineteenth Century the 
grievances against Spain took a new form. Although 
the Mississippi had been thrown open to the commerce 
of the Americans they were forbidden to enter the 
Spanish domain on pain of arrest and imprisonment, 
or even death. The traders among the Indians were 
apprehended, their goods confiscated, and border 
troubles — for example the Kemper brothers episode in 
West Florida — assum.ed in several cases serious com- 
plications. But the mine was laid on October i6, 1802, 
when Juan Ventura Morales, the Spanish Intendant of 
Louisiana, proclaimed that the right of depositing 
goods in New Orleans had been forfeited by the Ameri- 
cans. The whole country was aroused ; war for the vin- 
dication of rights was everywhere proclaimed ; and it is 
not surprising that strong measures were contemplated 
against the arrogant foreigners. The Americans looked 
upon the right of deposit as one which could not be 
withdrawn ; but the protests of the Governor of Louisi- 
ana and the Secretary of War at Washington were 
inefifectual. In the end the action was disavowed by 
Spain, but nothing could stay the storm which had been 
raised. Henry Clay of Kentucky did not exaggerate 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 9 

wken he declared that : *'The whole country was in 
commotion and, at the nod of the Government, would 
have fallen on Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and 
punished the treachery of the perfidious Government." ^ 
In many quarters it was openly advocated that the 
West should appeal to arms. "Coriolanus" said in the 
Alorniiig Chronicle, December 27, 1802 : "Kentucky 
has the advantage of invasion; and she no doubt will 
use it, if unsupported by the Union; she moves alone 
to the combat; she is situated on the waters rapidly 
descending to the point of attack ; she will overwhelm 
Orleans and West Florida with promptitude and 
ease."^ 

Amidst this general clamor came the startling 
report of the transfer of Louisiana to Napoleon. The 
South joined the West in declaring that France should 
not be allowed to establish herself in her old possession. 
Nor was Jefferson so deaf as to mistake the ring of 
earnestness in the voice of his constituency — his strong- 
hold was in the South and West. He wrote in his 
message to Congress, October 17, 1803: "Previously, 
however, to this period we have not been unaware of 
the danger to which our peace would be perpetually 
exposed, whilst so important a key to the command of 
the western country remained under foreign power." 
At the crisis, he said that if France persisted in her 
course to reoccupy Louisiana the United States would, 
of necessity, be forced to marry the army and navy of 
England. He wished not for war; yet he saw that it 

^Prentice's Life of Henry Clay, p. 77. 

^Palladium (Frankfort, Kentucky), September 18, 1806. 



lo THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

was unavoidable if Louisiana was not secured to the 
Union, so he sought to purchase the coveted land. 

In 1762 France ceded to Spain a region of unknown 
extent lying in the main to the west of the Mississippi ; 
this territory was known as Louisiana, having been 
named in honor of the great Louis. But now that 
France again led the nations and was dominated by 
such a man as Bonaparte the retrocession was sought, 
and on October i, 1800, with the secret treaty of San 
Ildefonso the act was concluded. Without entering into 
details, it is enough to state that the rupture of the 
Peace of Amiens, with its immediate consequences, 
caused Napoleon to meet the United States half way — 
and Louisiana was sold. 

Hardly had the report of its acquisition become 
public when the question as to limits arose. Indeed, 
the United States commissioners, Monroe and Living- 
ston, were engaged over this before the papers were 
signed. France held that the United States was en- 
titled only to the land known as Louisiana, which was 
transferred to Spain ini762andwhich"was retroceded to 
France by Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800. 
The United States was entitled to so much, but what 
were the boundaries ? Flow far did Louisiana extend to 
the east? To the Iberville or to the Perdido? And 
was the western limit marked by the Arroyo Hondo, 
the Sabine, or the Rio Grande? 

The question of limits, however, did not at first 
disturb the minds of the Westerners. The cession 
created great rejoicing throughout the region directly 
affected; meetings were held and resolutions passed, 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1 1 

while governors thought it of enough importance to 
mention in their messages. Governor Greenup told in 
grandiloquent words what it meant for Kentucky and 
for the West, closing his remarks with a peroration on 
America as the home of freedom/ Quite different was 
the attitude of New England, where the purchase was 
held up to the grossest ridicule. To the men who 
opened the way for the march of empire it meant 
everything. No longer would their flatboats be levied 
upon by Spain for floating on the Father of Waters ; no 
longer would they be barred from the markets because 
of excessive duties; no longer would their material 
growth be hampered by a foreign power; — there were 
new regions to occupy, richer lands to develop and un- 
bounded freedom of action! Now indeed the West- 
erners rejoiced in the strong arm of the Government. 
They had more than they had dared to expect, and their 
enthusiasm for Jefferson and the national Government, 
to whom all was attributed, was unlimited. 

The acquisition of Louisiana settled finally the 
question of the navigation of the Mississippi; but the 
boundary dispute, complicated by the "French Spolia- 
tion Claims," which had their origin in French depre- 
dations on American commerce, promised no solution 
short of the sword. In the West, in truth, the sword 
was ready at any moment to leap from the scabbard. 
If the backwoodsman desired to move into new lands in 
search of game or to barter with the natives, he resented 
the law which forbade his approach. No inhabitant of 
Louisiana, so the royal order read, was to be permitted 

^Palladium, November lo, 1804. 



12 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

to enter Nueva Espana/ for he had but one object in 
view — to strike a blow at Spain. The primary purpose 
of any expedition was to corrupt his Majesty's alhes,the 
Indians, or to study the geography for inihtary pur- 
poses. NemecioSalcedo, Captain-General of the Internal 
Provinces of Mexico, went to such an extreme that he 
complained to the Viceroy, in October, 1805, of the 
Lewis and Clark Expedition, saying that it went osten- 
sibly to discover the source of the Missouri, but really 
to estrange the Indians.^ The Viceroy of Mexico sent 
reinforcements to the Sabine River to protect the fron- 
tier, and agents among the natives of Texas. Presents 
were distributed among them, for, as the Spaniards 
wrote. Dr. Sibley, the Indian agent of the Americans, 
had tried to seduce them from their allegiance. Jeffer- 
son, also in expectation of war, instructed Sibley to 
spare no means to convince the Red Men "of the justice 
and liberality we are determined to use towards them, 
and to attach them to us indissolubly." ^ 

Beside the bitter hatred of Spain there had sprung 
into vigorous life in the West a national consciousness, 
a national mind, which resented the insults of the 
powers and which was destined to preserve the Union 
in the second war with Great Britain. Indeed, in a 
sense, love for the Constitution meant detestation of 
Spain. The conflict with the wilderness and its inhabi- 
tants, the free air, and freedom from restrictions, had 

^Salcedo to Cordero, January 9, 1804; MSS. Bexar Archives. 

^Salcedo to Iturrigaray, October 2, 1805; MSS. Bexar 
Archives. 

^Jefferson to Dr. Sibley, May 27, 1805; Jefferson's (Wash- 
ington, ed.) ll^'oiks, iv., 580. 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 13 

caused the Westerners to recoil at the thought of 
vSpanish tyranny and had, under the stimulus of their 
predilections, converted them unwittingly into revolu- 
tionists ; and thus for years the West harbored the most 
devoted adherents of the Constitution and the most 
unscrupulous filibusters. They had a contempt for 
Spanish institutions, civil and religious, and were filled 
with ''painful solicitude for the unfortunate millions 
she held in bondage." They indulged, said Foote in 
his History of Texas, "a. jealousy active and unre- 
mitting towards the Spanish Government and people 
on account of the power which they possessed of dis- 
turbing the peace and retarding the growth of the 
United States." To contempt and jealousy were 
added the sense of injustice done us in the Napo- 
leonic wars and the question of the settlement of 
boundaries. Most Westerners thought West Florida 
and Texas ours by right of purchase and were eager 
to seize them. The Bishop of Nueva Leon, who visited 
Natchitoches in January, 1805, wrote ^ to Viceroy Itur- 
rigaray that ''these Republicans count themselves own- 
ers of the territory to the Rio Grande." There were 
many, too, who endorsed what Jefferson suggested in a 
letter to A. Stewart in 1785 concerning the disposition 
of the Spanish possessions, that it was best for the 
interests of the great continent not to press too soon 
upon the Spaniards; but they believed the time was 
now come "to gain it from them piece by piece." 

It was this the Spaniards feared; they had an in- 

^Bishop of Nueva Leon to Iturrigaray, January 20, 1805; 
MSS. Mexican Archives. 



14 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

herent dread of the approach of the Americans, who 
were looked upon as being by blood and tradition law- 
less terrorists and revolutionists. Nor has the history 
of Spain in America during the Nineteenth Century 
tended, in their view, to disprove the correctness of the 
belief. One of the reasons which brought Spain to 
consent to the transfer of Louisiana to France was the 
hope that it would be made a buffer between the Ameri- 
can and her own possessions. But its acquisition by the 
United States reopened the fears and difficulties of her 
neighbor. Louisiana became henceforth, as de Onis, 
the noted minister to this country, wrote,^ a gateway 
for adventurers into Mexico. 

On the Continent, so far as our study is concerned, 
the supremacy of French influence in the determinations 
of the Spanish Court was of paramount importance. 
It made possible the peaceful acquisition of Louisiana 
and restrained the United States from going to war 
with Spain during the years immediately succeeding; 
for war with Spain meant war with France also. But 
for this, Mexico and other Spanish-American colonies 
would have been earlier revolutionized. Napoleon 
desired to bring into his world-wide empire these 
boundless possessions ; therefore France stood as a bar- 
rier between the two disputants. The wars that raged 
on the Continent had interest for us only in so far as 
they were waged, or were supposed to be waged, on 
the basis of humanitarian principles — the rights of the 
people as opposed to absolutism. This was the sign 
which roused the American people and which, in spite 

^De Onis's Cuestion de Texas, p. 3. 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 15 



of Napoleon's unwise and unwarranted attacks on our 
commerce, kept the masses steadfastly in sympathy 
with France in her struggles. The case might have been 
modified somewhat had England acted another role; 
but so uncompromising and bitter was her resentment 
and her memory of the War of the Revolution that 
she disregarded at will our interests and insulted when- 
ever she chose our national dignity. With Europe at 
war, America struggled hard to preserve her neutrality, 
and in accomplishing this she became the prey of both 
France and England, while suffering outrage after out- 
rage from a power she longed to grind under her heel. 

It was at such a juncture as this — the Americas in 
a state of unrest and revolution, Europe embroiled in 
the deadly and terrible struggles of Pitt and Napoleon, 
and the United States threatening war with Spain — 
that the first term of Jefferson's administration came to 
an end, and Aaron Burr, indicted for the slaying of 
Hamilton, eschewed by the Republicans and hounded 
by the Federalists, stepped down from the office of 
Vice-President. He had already embarked in an enter- 
prise simple enough in itself, but which, through the 
tangling of his own web and the interplay of circum- 
stances over which he had no control, was destined to 
become a puzzle for succeeding generations. 



CHAPTER II. 
Burros Tour of the West 

A 11 iTHE time when he embarked in his conspir- 
/\ acy Aaron Burr was forty-nine years of age. He 
./. JL. owned a distinguished ancestry ; Jonathan 
Edwards, the foremost theologian of America, was 
his grandfather on his mother's side, while the Burrs 
were of noble German blood, Aaron's father being a 
noted divine and president of Princeton College. The 
misfortunes of Burr began early; his parents died, 
leaving him and an only sister at a tender age to the 
care of relatives. He was carefully prepared for col- 
lege and at sixteen was graduated with distinction 
from Princeton. He was destined for the ministry, but 
a few months' study of theology under Dr. Bellamy 
seems to have confirmed him in skepticism. He deter- 
mined to take up the law, and began its study under 
Tappan Reeve, his brother-in-law. But the news of 
the battle of Lexington startled him from this for the 
time being. Hurrying to Boston Burr took his place 
in the ranks, and later joined Arnold's expedition to 
Quebec, nothing deterred by the perils of snow and ice 
and the pleadings of his relatives. He won distinction 
in the campaign and had the melancholy honor of bear- 
ing away the dead body of General Montgomery from 
before the snowbound blockhouse whence recoiled the 
last serious assault on the capital of Canada. Burr's 
rise was rapid ; his integrity, bravery, intelligence, and 

i6 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 17 

withal his knowledge of military science recommended 
him to his superiors. From an aide-de-camp to General 
Putnam he was soon elevated to the command of a 
regiment, acquitting himself notably while in charge of 
the Westchester lines above New York City. 

After four years of unremitting service, Burr re- 
signed from the army and at once bent his energies 
to the law, and within a short space was admitted to 
practice. He opened an office in Albany and was soon 
after married to Theodosia Prevost, an attractive and 
intellectual widow. To them was born a daughter, 
Theodosia, who w^as to play a brilliant and tragic role. 
Burr resided at Albany until the British were with- 
drawn from New York, when he moved thither and 
began the practice of his profession in earnest, mount- 
ing rapidly in the esteem of the public and dividing 
honors w^ith Alexander Hamilton. 

Burr's entry into politics seems to have been more 
by accident than design. In the beginning he steered 
clear of an alliance with either of the three great fami- 
lies — the Clintons, Livingstons, and Schuylers — creat- 
ing for himself an independent party, the nucleus of 
which was a group of enthusiastic young men whom 
Hamilton denominated Burr's myrmidons. As yet 
things went smoothly for Burr who was, in 1789, after 
having opposed the reelection of George Clinton to the 
governorship, appointed by him Attorney-General of 
the State. In this capacity he won recognition both as 
an orator and as an administrator. Two years later, to 
his surprise, so far as we know, he was elected to the 
Senate of the United States over the head of General 



1 8 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law. This was the 
beginning of the feud which closed with the dark, 
lamentable tragedy of Weehawken — the duel in which 
Hamilton was slain. 

The career of Burr in the Senate, where he espoused 
the Republican cause, Avas eminently honorable. He at 
once strode toward the leadership of the party, and in 
the Presidential election of 1796 received thirty elec- 
toral votes. At the end of his term of office, retired as 
Senator, he entered upon the maelstrom of New York 
politics. New York was in the election of 1800, as it 
has been so often since, the pivotal State, the determin- 
ing factor in the national election. Through Burr's 
agency the Clintons and Livingstons were united, the 
schisms in the ranks of the opposition were widened, 
and the commonwealth was swept by the Republican 
electors. Burr was rightly credited with the victory, 
and was obviously the logical candidate for the Vice- 
Presidency, for which place he was nominated by the 
Congressional caucus which named Jefferson for the 
highest honor. 

When the votes of the Electoral College were polled 
it was found that Jefferson and Burr had each seventy- 
three; John Adams sixty-five; Pinckney sixty- four; 
Jay one. There being a tie, the election was accord- 
ingly thrown into the House of Representatives, where 
it resolved itself into a struggle between the Federal- 
ists and the Republicans. After weary days of ballot- 
ing and much bitterness Jefferson was made President, 
Burr becoming Vice-President. Now indeed storms 
began to gather. He came to be regarded by the Clin- 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 19 

tons and Livingstons as an interloper. The party once 
victorious, he was discovered to be in the path of several 
aspiring gentlemen, who left no means untouched for 
his undoing. Attacked viciously by Cheetham, the 
scurrilous editor of the American Citizen, the organ of 
De Witt Clinton, he became also an object of suspicion 
and envy in the eyes of Jefferson and the Virginia 
political clique. Some of his assailants were only too 
glad to drag from the cesspool of political scandals any 
fragment which might be available in besmirching his 
character. He was accused of this and that, through all 
of which he maintained a resolute silence. It was a 
characteristic of his never to refute charges against his 
name. Losing caste with Jefferson and the leaders of 
his party, he stood for the governorship of New York ; 
but he was doomed, and defeat led further — to anni- 
hilation of his hopes for political preferment. 

Alexander Hamilton, who had pursued him with 
relentless language and bitter, damaging charges, was 
challenged to a duel and slain as a direct outcome of the 
part he had played in the election. If anything was now 
lacking to make Burr's isolation complete it was his 
stepping down from the chair of the Senate. Cast out by 
the Republicans, he was scorned and persecuted by the 
Federalists. As a party leader he was dead. Brilliant, 
ambitious, he must now have been in a state of mind 
bordering on despair, had he been addicted to gloom 
and melancholy. But it is not shown that Burr ever 
lamented or grieved over the course of things, how- 
ever severely and painfully it pressed upon him. He 
had still his myrmidons who were as devoted to their 



20 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

leader as they had been under the flush of his startHng 
successes. Driven from power in the States, he turned 
with enthusiasm to a plan he had early formed of revo- 
lutionizing the Spanish colonies.^ Indeed, before his 
term of office had expired, he was busy evolving ways 
and means which were to contribute to its success. As 
early as August 6, 1804, he had begun through an 
intermediary his intrigue with Anthony Merry, British 
Minister to the United States.^ 

A few days after the oath of office had been admin- 
istered to his successor, George Clinton, Burr, still ani- 
mated with the applause his last words in the Senate 
had occasioned, left Washington on a tour of the West 
— a preliminary to the inauguration of his project. He 
reached Philadelphia March 21, 1805, where he planned 
to spend ten days before continuing his journey. There 
he met Merry, to whom he now laid open his deceptive 
project, which he hoped would wring from the British 
treasury a sum of money commensurate with his needs. 
Mr. Merry, in a cipher letter of March 29th, gave Lord 
Harrowby the details :' — 

''Notwithstanding the known profligacy of Mr. Burr's 
character I am encouraged to report to your Lordship 
the substance of some secret communications which he 
has sought to make to me since he has been out of office. 
. . . Mr. Burr (with whom I know that the deputies 
became very intimate during their residence here) has 

^Davis's Memoirs of Aaron Burr, ii., 27^- 

^The text of this correspondence of Merry was disallowed 
by the British Foreign Office. 

'Merry to Lord Harrowby, March 29, 1805; MSS. British 
Archives. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 21 

mentioned to me that the inhabitants of Louisiana seem 
determined to render themselves independent of the 
United States and that the execution of their design is 
only delayed by the difficulty of obtaining previously an 
assurance of protection and assistance from some foreign 
power and of concerting and connecting their independ- 
ence with that of the inhabitants of the Western parts 
of the United States, who must always have a command 
over them by the rivers which communicate with the 
Mississippi. It is clear that Mr. Burr (although he has 
not as yet confided to me the exact nature and extent of 
his plan) means to endeavor to be the instrument for 
effecting such a connection. He has told me that the 
inhabitants of Louisiana, notwithstanding that they are 
almost all of French or Spanish origin, as well as those 
of the Western part of the United States, would, for 
many obvious reasons, prefer having the protection and 
assistance of Great Britain to the support of France ; but 
that if his Majesty's government should not think proper 
to listen to his overture, application will be made to that 
of France, who will, he had reason to know, be eager to 
attend to it in the most effectual manner, observing that 
peace in Europe would accelerate the event in question 
by affording to the French more easy means of com- 
munication with the continent of America, though, even 
while at war with England, they might always find those 
of sending the small force that would be required for 
the purpose in question. He pointed out the great com- 
mercial advantage which his Majesty's dominions in 
general would derive from furnishing almost exclusively 
(as they might through Canada and New Orleans) the 
inhabitants of so extensive a territory." 

A masterly argument and impressively put. It was 
a luring bait, and Merry took it at once for what it 
seemed — forwarding it to his Government with as 
much approbation as he dared and with as much expedi- 
tion as he could command. If the commercial classes 
of England were determined to annihilate American 



22 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

trade, if King George was set upon insulting the 
young nation as part of his daily routine, the idea of 
dividing the house against itself seemed to Merry not 
only inviting, but most wise and diplomatic. And 
furthermore, should England reject the offer, France 
might seize the occasion to deal the commercial and 
political interests of her enemy a telling blow. The 
proposition was inviting. Thus far the ex-Vice-Presi- 
dent had dealt only in generalities — he had discussed 
what was the common talk of the day concerning the 
infidelity of Louisiana and its determination to revolt. 
When pressed for something more tangible. Burr 
simply made excuses, giving out only as much as he 
deemed necessary to secure ''the protection and assur- 
ance required to accomplish the object." Merry con- 
tinued : 

"Mr. Burr observed that it would be too dangerous 
and even premature to disclose to me at present the full 
extent and detail of the plan he had formed ; but that he 
was at the same time aware of the necessity of making 
the most ample and unreserved communication to his 
Majesty's government, in order that they might be fully 
satisfied, as well of the good faith with which he means 
to act, as of the practicability and utility to them of the 
undertaking which he had in view and that he would 
therefore send a confidential person to England to make 
those communications as soon as he should have received 
through me, the necessary assurance of their being 
disposed to grant the protection and assurance required 
to accomplish the object." 

The hollowness of Burr's intrigue, the barefaced- 
ness of the sharp scheme to secure funds for the 
floating of his designs on Mexico by holding out hopes 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 23 

to Merry which he knew had not the shght-est chance 
of realization, did not appear at the moment, but could 
not have been more boldly proclaimed than in his 
statement of the ''protection and assurance required" : 

"In regard to the military aid, he said, two or three 
frigates and the same number of smaller vessels to be 
stationed at the mouth of the Mississippi to prevent its 
being blockaded by such force as the United States 
could send, and to keep open the communications with 
the sea would be the whole that would be wanted ; and 
in respect to money the loan of about one hundred thou- 
sand pounds would, he conceived, be sufficient for the 
immediate purposes of the enterprise, although it was 
impossible for him to speak at present with accuracy as 
to this matter. On the latter allegation he observed that 
any suspicion of his Majesty's government being con- 
cerned in the transaction, till after their independence 
should have been declared, which would arise if remit- 
tances were made to this country or if bills were drawn 
from hence, might be avoided by the appropriation to this 
object of a proportion of the two hundred thousand 
pounds which the United States have to pay to his Maj- 
esty next July, and part of which sum he would devise 
the means to get into his possession without its destina- 
tion being either known or suspected." 

Already the matter of money was worrying Burr 
and his chief associates. This most necessary article 
in the inauguration of any project was their first con- 
sideration, and, that it might be obtained, no device 
however questionable or nefarious was to be ignored 
if success were promised — the end would justify the 
means. The matter of the two or three frigates at the 
mouth of the Mississippi was as nothing in the scales 
with a hundred thousand pounds, which were conceived 



24 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

to be sufficient for the ''immediate purposes of the 
enterprise." 

After the interview with Merry, Burr quickly made 
his preparations for his journey over the mountains to 
Pittsburg. He advised his daughter to address him for 
the time being at Cincinnati, in care of John Smith, 
Senator from Ohio, adding that the object of his 
journey, "not mere curiosity or pour passer le temps,'' 
might take him to New Orleans and perhaps farther. It 
is quite probable that Burr planned a continuation of 
his voyage of discovery to Mexico. Certain it is that 
he alarmed CasaYrujo — the Spanish Minister who was 
proving such a plague to Jefferson — before leaving 
Washington by sending twice to him for a passport to 
Mexico, ''under the pretext that the death of General 
Hamilton (whom he killed out of spite) would not 
permit his remaining in the United States." Yrujo 
knew of Burr's interviews with Merry, and therefore 
thought the object of Burr's visit most suspicious — in 
a word, he believed him the spy of England. He 
reported that Burr had taken with him mathematical 
instruments for the purpose of making plans, and that 
the officials of the Floridas had been warned against 
his manoeuvres.^ But Yrujo had not penetrated Burr's 
designs; little dreamed that his purpose was to place 
himself in touch with the revolutionists of Mexico, who 
were so shortly to smite the power of Spain. 

On April 29, 1805, Burr reached Pittsburg on the 
Ohio, where General James Wilkinson, who had just 
been appointed Governor of the newly organized Terri- 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, May 24, 1805; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 25 

tory of Louisiana, was to have joined him. But Wilkin- 
son had been delayed ; so, leaving a letter for him, Burr 
embarked upon the Ohio in an ark which he had had 
specially prepared for him. In due time he reached 
Marietta, a hamlet of eighty houses, where he parted 
company with Mathew Lyon, member of Congress 
from Tennessee, whom he had overtaken en route and 
with whom it seems the matter of Burr's return to Con- 
gress from that State was discussed. Putting off the 
next day he passed Parkersburg, and two miles below 
arrived at Blennerhassett's Island, which has become 
famous through its connection with the conspiracy. Its 
three hundred acres have been much reduced by the 
encroachment of the river, but the narrowing shores, 
where Harman Blennerhassett, an Irish gentleman, 
had planted fields of hemp and had erected palatial 
buildings, are still haunted with the memory of a 
tragedy. The master was absent, but Mrs. Blenner- 
hassett invited the ex-Vice-President to dinner — and 
this was the beginning of a connection which was to 
link forever the names of Burr and Blennerhassett. 

On the eleventh of May Burr reached Cincinnati, 
then a town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, where 
he became the guest of Senator John Smith, who was -4 
also a storekeeper and army contractor. There he 
met Jonathan Dayton, a friend from Revolutionary 
times, whose term as Senator from New Jersey had 
just expired. Burr spent a day in the company of 
Smith and Dayton, who were allied with him in the 
formulation of plans for the project. Hurrying down 
the river he next stopped at Louisville, whence he took 



/ 



26 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

horse to Frankfort, which place was reached May 20th. 
Passing through Lexington, the 29th found him at 
Nashville, where he was four days the guest of Andrew 
Jackson and the recipient of unusual attentions. He 
was no longer the despised murderer of Hamilton, but 
the triumphant duelist; no longer the insidious, un- 
scrupulous intriguer, but the general who had led the 
cohorts of Democracy to victory; and, finally, he was 
accepted as the predestined leader who was to scourge 
the Spaniards from America. This was, after all, the 
mission of his life. Such was Burr's announcement, 
and the news spread as fast as such welcome tidings 
might travel. To the Tennesseeans and the frontiers- 
men in general it was a battle-call they were only too 
eager to answer; and among the first to respond was 
Andrew Jackson, major-general of the Tennessee 
militia. 

On June 3d Burr was provided by his host with an 
open boat, in which he floated to the mouth of the" 
Cumberland River, a distance of two hundred and 
thirty miles, where his ark, which had come down the 
Ohio, was in waiting. The next stop was made sixteen 
miles down the Ohio at Fort Massac — a prominent 
frontier post on the north bank of the river not many 
miles from its juncture with the Mississippi — where 
General Wilkinson had arrived, having descended the 
river from Pittsburg in the wake of Burr. The General 
had halted also in Cincinnati, keeping company with 
Smith and Dayton, who were represented as busy with 
a scheme to dig a canal around the falls of the Ohio. 
He found time, however, to write to John Adair, an 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 27 

influential Kentuckian soon to succeed John Brecken- 
ridge in the Senate: "I was to have introduced my 
friend Burr to you ; but in this I failed by accident. 
He understands your merits, and reckons on you. Pre- 
pare to visit me, and I will tell you all. We must have 
a peep at the unknown world beyond me." This letter 
perhaps affords a clue to the topic discussed by the 
General and his friends during the four days spent at 
Massac. No doubt the whole situation was canvassed : 
the probability of war with Spain ; the ease with which 
the Floridas might be overrun ; the matter of the equip- 
ping of an army which should sail for Vera Cruz to 
light the torch of insurrection in Mexico. Wilkinson 
afterward averred that the subjects of their conferences 
were legitimate. Whatever they were, the two old 
army friends, who had stood side by side under the 
walls of Quebec, parted with high hopes, Wilkinson 
making his way slowly to St. Louis, while Burr set out 
in a barge fitted up by the general with sails and colors, 
and manned by ten soldiers and a sergeant. In his 
pocket was a letter to Daniel Clark, a prominent mer- 
chant and influential citizen of New Orleans : 

"This will be delivered to you by Colonel Burr," 
began the general's introductory note,^ ''whose worth you 
know well how to estimate. If the persecutions of a 
great and honorable man, can give title to generous atten- 
tions, he has claims to all your civilities, and all your 
services. You cannot oblige me more than by such con- 
duct ; and I pledge my life to you, it will not be misap- 
plied. To him I refer you for many things improper to 
letter, and which he will not say to any other." 

^Wilkinson's Memoirs, ii., Ap. Ixxi. 



2 8 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

While Burr, thus equipped, passed on toward New 
Orleans, Wilkinson approached Majors Bruff and Hunt 
of the garrison of St. Louis, Timothy Kibby, John 
McKee, and others with propositions varying from the 
conquest of Mexico to the establishment of a military 
empire in Louisiana as a consequence of anarchy in the 
Eastern States, growing out of the rule of Democracy. 
Wilkinson had already begun sowing the seeds which 
were to prove the destruction of Burr. On June 24th 
instructions were written for Lieutenant Pike, who 
went, according to Kibby and Adair, to explore the 
way to Santa Fe and the mines of Mexico. 

On June 25, 1805, Burr landed at New Orleans. The 
Orleans Gazette chronicled at the time : "Colonel Aaron 
Burr, late Vice-President of the United States, arrived 
here on Wednesday last in a boat displaying the Ameri- 
can ensign, and rowed by a detachment of soldiers. 
We understand he purposes returning to Kentucky in 
ten or twelve days." Burr was much pleased with the 
city, and wrote Theodosia that he should certainly 
settle there were it not for herself and her boy, who 
controlled his fate. New Orleans was a place of no 
mean importance; during the course of a year three 
hundred sea-going vessels and six thousand river flat- 
boats arrived at its levees, and nine thousand people 
busied themselves within its limits. The letter to Clark 
was presented, and at an early date he gave a dinner 
in Burr's honor, which was attended by the best element 
in the city. Other fetes followed, and Burr was every- 
where received with the utmost cordiality. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 29 

The society most frequented by Burr has been, and 
in all probability will remain, a source of dispute.^ 
There is no conclusive evidence to show that Burr re- 
stricted his confidences while in New Orleans to any 
individual or group of individuals. It appears from 
the light we have that Burr's purpose was to observe 
the drift of public opinion; to engage the warlike and 
the adventurous in his filibustering enterprise against 
the Spanish possessions. In this he was most success- 
ful; the Mexican Association, formed for the avowed 
purpose of collecting Mexican data which would be 
useful for the United States in case of war with 
Spain, was enlisted in his cause. Tw^o of the most 
influential members of the Association were John Wat- 
kins, Mayor of New Orleans, and James Workman, 
judge of the county court. The former related to 
W. C. C. Claiborne, Governor of the Territory of 

^Henry Adams says that Burr was "entertained by the 
enemies of Governor Claiborne and of the Spaniards" {History 
of the United States, iii., 223) ; that Wilkinson told the story, on 
the evidence of Lieutenant Spence, that "Burr on his arrival in 
Louisiana became acquainted with the so-called Mexican Asso- 
ciation — a body of some three hundred men, leagued together 
for the emancipation of Mexico from the Spanish rule, . . . 
and under his influence the scheme of disunion was made a part 
of the Mexican plan." A moment later we are assured by the 
same eminent authority that Burr did not conceal his secrets 
from his ''principal allies — the Creoles of New Orleans" (iii., 
227). In other words, Mr. Adams contends — for the Mexican 
Association was composed of Americans — that practically the 
whole city, rent with factions, was in the secret which embraced 
the idea of a separation of the States and the conquest of Mexico, 
and yet all was harmonious. 

Another writer of repute, Charles Gayarre , has averred 
{History of Louisiana, iii., 81) that Burr fell in with the Span- 
iards and gave them some intimation of his business. Gayarre 
never gave up this idea, for he interpreted the movement of the 
Spanish troops toward Baton Rouge at the moment of the crisis 
of the conspiracy as a diversion in Burr's behal£ 



30 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

Orleans, at the crisis the history of the organization, 
repudiating in the most emphatic terms the charge of 
Wilkinson that its members were rabid disunionists. 
Watkins proved what he averred ; even Claiborne when 
the storm had subsided, though he removed Watkins 
from the mayoralty, was obliged to confess to Madison, 
"I believe he meditated nothing against the American 
Government — and that he sincerely loves his country. 
I however am of opinion that his zeal for the libera- 
tion of Mexico led him into some imprudences."^ 
Workman's interest in the cause of the Spanish colonies 
was not extinguished by the collapse of Burr's scheme, 
Erick Bollman, who was one of the prime movers in the 
Conspiracy, being able to write in 1808, "Judge Work- 
man, now practising as a lawyer, is the only man of 
energy, which is constantly excited in the old cause. 
His looks are steadfastly turned to the South. "^ 

Plans for the "liberation of Mexico" were formed 
beyond doubt:. Emissaries were to be employed. The 
Bishop of New Orleans, who had traveled in Mexico 
and knew the discontent of the masses and the clergy, 
was in the secret, and designated three Jesuits to act as 
agents for the revolutionists. Madame Xavier Tar j con, 
superior of the convent of Ursuline nuns at New Or- 
leans, was also acquainted with the plot.^ The para- 
mount idea of the time was the revolutionizing of the 
Spanish territories — and Burr announced here, as he 

^Claiborne to Madison, March 11, 1807; Letters in Relation 
to Burr's Conspiracy, MSS. State Department Archives. 

^Bollman to Burr, August 11, 1808; Private Journal of Aaron 
^Burr i., 29. 

'Davis's Memoirs of Aaron Burr, ii., 382. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 31 

had done in Kentucky and Tennessee, that his hfe 
should be devoted to the overthrowing of the Spanish 
power in America. 

Clark probably knew as much as any one of what 
was in contemplation, and his attitude of friendliness 
toward Burr at a later period, when he had every 
motive to pursue a different course, with his outspoken 
condemnation of Wilkinson in his Proofs,^ shows 
that one of his attributes was love of justice. Gayarre 
more than established the correctness of the Proofs, 
which exposed Wilkinson's corrupt dealings with the 
Spaniards; and if Clark never fully divulged his knowl- 
edge of Burr's project, he betrayed the secret of it when 
he declared on the floor of Congress, at the moment 
when expectation was at its highest tension, that if 
treason were contemplated no Louisianian would be 
found concerned in it ! Clark himself entertained revo- 
lutionary ideas, but they did not involve the sundering 
of the States. John Graham, Secretary of the Territory 
of Orleans, said that Clark had given him some papers 
which told, among other things, of the strength of the 
Mexican forces and garrisoned towns between Vera 
Cruz and the City of Mexico, and of the naval strength 
of Vera Cruz. It was Clark's opinion that Mexico 
could be easily invaded, but he would have nothing to 
do with such an undertaking if headed by the Govern- 
ment. Permission was all that was wanted — an empire 
could then be established.' This information had been 



^Clark's Proofs of the Corruption of General James Wilkin- 
son. 

^Clark's Proofs, p. 103. 



32 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

acquired while on trading voyages to the chief seaport 
of Mexico. Of these voyages there are frequent ac- 
counts in the Spanish official reports/ for Clark was 
wont to recite to Government the news of Europe and 
America. But an end came to this when the Spaniards 
learned that he had been chosen a Delegate to Congress.' 
Burr no doubt profited by what Clark had learned of the 
conditions of society in Mexico, and the merchant was 
observer enough to note that a revolution was imminent. 
That he agreed to join with Burr there is little doubt; 
but he, like many others, wished to see the movement 
triumphant before sharing its fortunes. Certain it is 
Clark never set out to play a heavy part in the plot, 
which, as he understood it, was wholly against Mexico. 
It was a matter for jest with him when he heard on 
the streets of New Orleans the extravagant designs 
attributed to his new acquaintance, whose address even 
was unknown to him. September 7th, a few weeks 
after the departure of Burr from New Orleans and 
almost at the hour of his arrival in St. Louis on his 
visit to Wilkinson, Clark wrote to the General :' — 

''Many absurd and wild reports are circulated here, 
and have reached the ears of the officers of the late 
Spanish Government, respecting our ex- Vice- President. 
. . . You are spoken of as his right-hand man. Entre 
nous, I believe that Minor of Natchez has had a great 
part in this business, in order to make himself of impor- 
tance — he is in the pay of Spain and wishes to convince 

^Clarkto Pedro de Alamo, September 26, 1805; MSS. Mex- 
ican Archives, 

^Iturrigaray to Soler, August 27, 1806; MSS. Mexican 
Archives. 

'Wilkinson's Memoirs, ii., Ap. xxxiii. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 33 

them that he is much their friend. . . . What in the 
name of Heaven could give rise to these extravagances? 
Were I sufficiently intimate with Mr. Burr, and knew 
where to direct a line to him, I should take the liberty of 
writing to him. . . . The tale is a horrid one, if well 
told. Kentucky, Tennessee, the State of Ohio, with part 
of Georgia and part of Carolina, are to be bribed with 
the plunder of the vSpanish countries west of us to sepa- 
rate from the Union ; this is but a part of the business. 
Heaven, what wonderful doings there will be in those 
days ! . . . Amuse Mr. Burr with an account of it." 

Burr was pleased with the aspect of affairs in 
Louisiana and wrote his daughter that he had promised 
to return the next fall. Having spent a fortnight in 
New Orleans, where he had attached to his interests the 
Mexican Association, the adventurers, and the revolu- 
tionary element, Burr, mounted on horses provided by 
Clark, set out on his return overland. His first stop 
was at Natchez, where a week was spent among those 
who were eager to engage in a war with Spain, 
to punish the so-called invaders of the country. From 
Natchez he proceeded to Nashville, hazarding four 
hundred and fifty miles of wilderness. On August 6th 
he was again domiciled with Jackson, who was, as 
Burr described him at the time, a man of intelligence 
and a prompt, frank, ardent soul. A public dinner 
was now spread in Burr's honor at the capital, where 
toasts were drunk of a nature to leave no doubt as 
to the sympathies of the audience. Then he passed 
to Lexington, where he was the recipient of hospi- 
talities such as only Southerners of that day knew 
how to dispense. The last day of August Burr was 
riding the twenty-two miles from Lexington to Frank- 



34 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

fort, where he was once more quartered with John 
Brown, a distinguished citizen who had for years been 
a prominent figure in Kentucky poHtics. On September 
2d Burr was in Louisville; ten days later he reached 
St. Louis on a visit to General Wilkinson, who had 
already assumed the reins as governor. Burr now 
learned that Pike was exploring the best route to Santa 
Fe; and Wilkinson heard what was not news to him, 
that the West and South were eager for a fight with 
Spain, that an army could be raised in a few days for 
the conquest of Mexico. To all appearances there was 
no break in their friendship, nor any abatement of 
enthusiasm. In truth it could have been no object of 
minor importance which called Burr at that season so 
far out of his way. Wilkinson attempted to depreciate 
this visit by repeating under oath at the trial at Rich- 
mond the following conversation •} — 

''Mr. Burr speaking of the imbecility of the Govern- 
ment said it would molder to pieces, die a natural death, 
or words to that effect, adding that the people of the 
Western country were ready to revolt. To this I recollect 
replying that, if he had not profited more by his journey 
in other respects, he had better have remained at Wash- 
ington or Philadelphia; for surely, said I, my friend, no 
person was ever more mistaken! The Western people 
disaffected to the Government! They are bigoted to 
Jefferson and democracy." 

What was equally to the point, the General claimed 
to have written, upon the departure of the ex- Vice- 
President, a letter denouncing him to the Secretary of 
the Navy ; Wilkinson thought its text about as follows : 

^Annals of Congress, 1807-08, p. 611. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 35 

"Burr is about something, but whether internal or ex- 
ternal I cannot discover. I think you should keep an 
eye on him." 

In spite of the paucity of the testimony, Hildreth^ 
and others have tacitly credited Wilkinson with having, 
at so early a date, given notice of the approaching dan- 
ger. There are, however, no available data to show that 
his interest in the career of Burr had flagged, for we 
find him carefully fostering the deception that Burr 
sought to be returned to Congress. When Burr left 
St. Louis for Vincennes, capital of Indiana Territory, 
which place he reached September 23d, he carried with 
him this letter from Wilkinson to Governor William 
Henry Harrison:^ 

''I will demand from your friendship a boon in its 
influence co-extensive with the Union; a boon, perhaps, 
on which the Union may much depend; a boon which 
may serve me, may serve you, and disserve neither. . . . 
If you ask, What is this important boon which I so 
earnestly crave? I will say to you, return the bearer to 
the councils of our country, where his talents and abilities 
are afl-important at the present moment." 

From Vincennes, at the time he set out for Wash- 
ington, Burr wrote Wilkinson that the matter of which 
he had written had not been mentioned in his conversa- 
tion. But whether the General had or had not discoun- 
tenanced Burr's projects, there were not wanting those 
who looked askance at his Western meanderings. Be- 
fore he had begun his homeward journey the news- 

^History of the United States, v., 599. 
'Parton's Life of Burr, u., 50. 



2,6 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

papers attributed to him as many plots as the ingenuity 
of the sensation-monger could conjure up. 

"We have been frequently asked," explained the editor 
of the Lexington Gazette, "why we have paid such atten- 
tion to the movements of Mr. Burr since his arrival in 
the Western country. The latter part of his political 
career, fraught, perhaps, with a degree of duplicity which 
can never be satisfactorily defended, has made him an 
object of attention wherever he has traveled. His talents 
for intrigue are considered as unrivalled in America, and 
his disposition doubted by few. The subsequent queries 
have lately appeared in the Gazette of the United States. 
Whether any circumstances have come to the knowledge 
of the writer which would justify such a publication, we 
are uninformed. Without giving an opinion as to his 
views in this country, we publish the queries, ... at 
the same time believing that if he calculated on with- 
drawing the affections of the people of the Western 
States from their Government, he will find himself 
deceived, if he has not already made the discovery." ^ 

Here are the queries alluded to : 

"How long will it be before we shall hear of Colonel 
Burr being at the head of a revolutionary party on the 
Western waters? Is it a fact that Colonel Burr has 
formed a plan to engage the adventurous and enterprising 
young men from the Atlantic States to Louisiana? Is it 
one of the inducements that an immediate convention 
will be called from the States bordering on the Ohio and 
Mississippi to form a separate government ? Is it another 
that all the public lands are to be seized and partitioned 
among these States, except what is reserved for the war- 
like friends and followers of Burr in the revolution? Is 
it part of the plan for the new States to grant the new 
lands in bounties to entice inhabitants from the Atlantic 
States? How soon will the forts and magazines and all 

^Palladium, September 7, 1805. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 37 



the military posts at New Orleans and on the Mississippi 
be in the hands of Colonel Burr's revolutionary party r 
How soon will Colonel Burr engage in the reduction^ of 
Mexico by granting liberty to its inhabitants, and seizing 
on its treasures, aided by British ships and forces? What 
difficulty can there be in completing a revolution m one 
summer, among the Western States, when they will gain 
the Congress lands, will throw off the public debt, will 
seize their own revenues, and enjoy the plunder of 
Spain?" 

To say the least, this was a remarkable set of inter- 
rogations; and what was equally remarkable was the 
avidity with which it was seized on by the press and 
circulated with added comment from border to border 
of the country. It was a sensational story, and whether 
it were the product of some quill-driver of a partisan 
sheet, or the naked fact, the readers of the "yellow" 
journals of that day had no means of ascertaining. 
They rarely questioned ; in the absence of the telegraph 
it was no easy task to verify a report, and such writers 
as John Wood and Duane, Cheetham and Callender 
never pothered over uncertainties. In the West at this 
time the papers were a unit in denouncing the unfair 
and altogether slanderous insinuations that the fron- 
tiersmen were eager for lawless measures. But in spite 
of expressions of affection for the Constitution and 
for the Union, the impression spread abroad that the 
West was once more on the verge of slipping under 
the Spanish yoke; or, indeed, of enlisting under the 
banner of an adventurer. In this way the country was 
gradually prepared for the events of the ensuing year. 
Nor were these whispers of suspicion to be stayed by 
the boundaries of the Republic. Before the end of 



38 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

July — a month before Clark reported the rumors from 
New Orleans, weeks before the newspapers took up the 
alarm — the news had reached our warlike neighbors 
in Texas that Aaron Burr, ex- Vice-President, had come 
to New Orleans under military escort, and that it was 
reported he meditated some extraordinary enterprise, 
the exact nature of which was still in doubt/ Like- 
wise the stirring news spread eastward. On August 4th, 
while Burr was emerging from the wilderness to the 
south of Nashville, Merry hastened to communicate to 
Lord Mulgrave that the scheme had been betrayed or 
had been ruined through publicity : 

''Notwithstanding that the confidential person, whom, 
as I had the honor to mention to your lordship in my 
despatch No. 22 [March 29th] Mr. Burr had said that 
he intended to send to me, has not as yet appeared, I learn 
that that gentleman has commenced his plan in the West- 
ern country, and apparently with much success, although 
it would seem, that he or some of his agents have either 
been indiscreet in their communications, or have been 
betrayed by some person, in whom they considered that 
they had reason to confide, for the object of his journey 
has now begun to be noticed in the public prints, where 
it is said that a convention is to be called immediately 
from the States bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi 
for the purpose of forming a separate government. It 
is, however, possible that the business may be so far 
advanced as, from the nature of it, to render any further 
secrecy impossible. The best accounts of Mr. Burr were 
from St. Louis, from whence he had proceeded to New 
Orleans, and it is observed that he had been received 
everywhere with the most marked attention." ^ 

A year had elapsed since Merry had made his first 

^Valle to Elguezabal, July 30, 1805 ; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
''Merry to Mulgrave, August 4, 1805; MSS. British Archives. 



BURR'S TOUR OF THE WEST 39 

report to the Foreign Office of Burr's project; months 
had passed since the notable letter of March 29th had 
been dispatched — and yet the home Government was 
silent. The Minister should have taken the hint. But 
far from that, his enthusiasm was unbounded when he 
learned through current rumor that the undertaking 
was actually begun. Here was a triumph to boast of, 
for had he not rendered an early account of it to the 
Foreign Office? This time, however, his information 
had come through the medium of the press, and Yrujo 
read the same paragraphs and inclosed them to 
Cevallos, the Spanish Minister of State, with a letter 
dated August 5th, one day after Merry had penned 
his account. Referring to Burr's secret interviews with 
with the English Minister, his demand for a passport 
to Mexico, the draughting instruments, he registered 
again his suspicions, adding, however, that the West 
at the moment was unripe for Burr's designs, and 
scoffing at the idea of an attack on Mexico. In con- 
clusion, Yrujo showed in a paragraph that he had al- 
most fathomed the business of Burr : 

'The supposed expedition against Mexico is ridic- 
ulous and chimerical in the present state of things ; but I 
am not unaware that Burr, in order to get moneys from 
the English Minister or from England, has made to him 
some such proposition, in which he is to play the leading 
role.'" 

Yrujo little knew that his turn to be deceived by 
the conspirators in their casting about for funds was 
close at hand. They appeared to the Spanish Minister 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, August s, 1805; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



40 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

masked, as Merry had seen them, though the make-up 
had been varied with the necessities of the case. 

Thus, before the summer of 1805 had expired the 
country from North to South was vibrant with tales 
of a plot, or rather of as many plots as ingenuity could 
contrive — nothing was tangible. Toward the middle 
of November, 1805, Burr had reached Washington 
without mishap from his Western tour, and went at 
once to the British Legation — Dayton who had been ill 
in the West had only two days prior made a report to 
Merry — to unroll his budget of falsehoods and to learn 
the fate of his propositions. Finding no reply he 
straightway widened and deepened his schemes for 
obtaining money. That all-essential element to his suc- 
cess he w^as determined to secure, without regard to 
consequences immediate or future. 



CHAPTER III. 

Burros Intrigues, 

WHEN Aaron Burr had returned to Washing- 
ton from his summer in the West, he was 
fully satisfied that his project could fail only 
for want of the "sinews of war." Everywhere through 
the Western country he had been applauded as the 
leader who was to march an army to the heart of the 
Kingdom of Mexico, giving freedom to her enslaved 
millions, and, incidentally, fortunes to his followers. 
The Westerners — excitable, sympathetic, liberty-lov- 
ing, and patriotic — longed for an opportunity to reta- 
liate against Spain for insults of long standing, and 
they were ready to accept the smallest provocation as 
excuse for an assault on her decaying empire. Burr 
gave them to understand that a war with their old 
oppressor was only a matter of time ; that the Govern- 
ment would not interfere with his plans ; while to some 
he said that an expedition for the invasion of the Span- 
ish territories would be formed regardless of cause or 
consequence. It was against this emergency that he 
needed half a million dollars; and in the pursuit of 
which he invoked all his powers of dissimulation — con- 
duct which has come in this later day, from the false 
light thrown upon the movement to distort and con- 
demn it. 

In this involved scheme the British Minister, or 
King George, was designed as the chief victim ; and 

41 



42 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

Burr's first interview with Merry upon returning to 
Washington from the West was a masterpiece of in- 
trigue. Merry scrupulously reported the whole of 
Burr's story to Lord Mulgrave.^ Burr opened with the 
remark that he thought the English Government dis- 
posed — 

"to afford him their assistance, but he observed that the 
information which had reached him on this head was 
not sufficiently explicit to authorize him to send a con- 
fidential person to London to make to them the necessary 
communication as he had promised and intended. He 
was therefore now obliged to try the effect of those which 
I might be able to convey. . . . These disappoint- 
ments gave him, he said, the deepest concern, because his 
journey through the Western country and Louisiana as 
far as New Orleans, as well as through a part of West 
Florida, had been attended with so much more success 
than he had even looked for, that everything was in fact 
completely prepared in every quarter for the execution 
of his plan ; and because he had therefore been induced 
to enter into an engagement with his associates and 
friends to return to them in the month of March next, 
in order to commence the operations." 

That Merry — who had more than three months 
earlier reported to Lord Mulgrave the successful com- 
mencement of the Western enterprise ; who had seen in 
the newspapers at least a dozen projects attributed to 
the ex-Vice-President — should have asked no questions, 
but have put in an official dispatch with his indorsement 
the whole of Burr's story, is more a compliment to 
his industry and ambition than to his sagacity or intelli- 
gence. Burr's fear of delay in receiving the pecuniary 

^Merry to Lord Mulgrave, November 25, 1805 ; MSS. British 
Archives. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 43 

assistance led him to say to Merry that the inaugura- 
tion of his plan was set for March, while in reality so 
early a date was never contemplated. Because of the 
shortness of the time and the winter season it was 
wholly out of the question. It was announced in the 
West for the ensuing fall ; and the correspondence and 
every step taken by the conspirators show that to have 
been the earliest time considered. Burr's next point 
of deception was that he had received encouraging 
communications which gave him "room to hope and 
expect that his Majesty's government were disposed to 
afford him their assistance." But the truth was that 
neither Colonel Williamson nor any other agent of 
Burr had appeared or seems likely ever to have ap- 
peared before the English Cabinet. The fact that 
Merry never received a line on the subject of the nego- 
tiation from the Foreign Office is proof conclusive that 
the Government never gave an outsider encouragement. 
To have Merry believe the contrary, however, was but 
a skillful device used by Burr to secure his approba- 
tion of the plan; for clearly it would have been dis- 
astrous for an arrangement to be made through any 
other medium than himself. 

"He [Burr] was sensible that no complete understand- 
ing on the subject could well take place without verbal 
communication ; but he flattered himself that enough 
might be explained in this way to give a commencement 
to the business, and that any ulterior arrangements might 
safely be left till the personal interviews he should have 
with the persons properly authorized for the purpose, 
whom he recommended to be sent with the ships of war, 
which it was necessary should cruise off the mouth of 
the Mississippi at the latest by the loth of April next, 



44 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

and to continue there until the commanding officers 
should receive information from him or from Mr. Daniel 
Clark of the country having declared itself independent." 

This splendid secret of the West declaring itself 
independent was not new to Merry, for the public 
prints, as Burr well knew, had only recently declared 
that a convention was soon to be called for just such a 
purpose. But in reality if such a proposition was ever 
mooted save by industrious editors there is no trace 
of it. 

Ostensibly to secure the success of his undertaking 
Burr now requested that to his former estimate of 
naval strength should be added a number of — 

"smaller vessels; because the overture which had been 
made to him at New Orleans from a person of the greatest 
influence in East and West Florida and the information 
he had otherwise acquired respecting the state of those 
countries, having convinced him that they are equally 
disposed to render themselves independent; and while he 
had good reason to believe that the same spirit prevails 
in many other parts of the Spanish dominions on this 
continent, such force with that which he should be able 
to provide would be required to defend the entrance of 
the river and the coasts of Florida and to keep up a 
free communication with the sea and those places where 
it might be found expedient to act." 

Here was indeed another lever, which, so far as 
Burr could see, promised to be effective; but which in 
reality worked greatly to the injury of his cause — 
if there had ever been a chance for it. So long as an 
attack on the integrity of the Union was in contempla- 
tion. King George might be expected to open his 
strong-box in its support ; but to bring the Floridas and 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 45 

"other places where it might be found expedient to act" 
within the scope of action was to close all avenues 
securely. True, England was at war with Spain, and 
an attack on the enemy, to all appearances, would be 
welcomed; but Burr was not aware that the British 
Ministry, while aiding Miranda, the South American 
patriot, in a minor way, were already considering 
plans for the absorption of the Spanish colonies, and 
would therefore look upon his enlarged scheme with 
disapprobation. In this connection Burr spoke of 
Miranda : 

"At the last meeting I had with Mr. Burr," said 
Merry, "he told me that he had just received notice from 
New York of the arrival there from England of General 
Aliranda who appeared by his information to have been 
sent to this country by his Majesty's government, to co- 
operate with him in the plan of operations against South 
America." 

So there was a "plan of operations against South 
America." Burr, however, disparaged Miranda's char- 
acter, declaring that he possessed neither discretion nor 
talents. But if either Miranda or Burr thought Eng- 
land disposed to carry on an unselfish war for the 
independence of Spanish America they were un- 
acquainted with the history of the Tories. The dispo- 
sition of the Spanish colonies "to render themselves 
independent" was the controlling fear of the Ministry. 
The situation was clearly stated the following year in 
an official dispatch written upon receipt of the news 
of the capture of Buenos Ayres by a British force :^ 

^Windham to Beresford, September 21, 1806; MSS. British 
Archives. 



46 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

"The great and ruling consideration which has so 
long restrained his Majesty from invading this part of 
the enemies' territories [Spanish America], has been the 
fear of exciting in those countries, from their known 
impatience of their forms of government, a spirit of insur- 
rection and revolt leading to consequences the most fatal 
and which except by the presence of a very superior force, 
his Majesty might not have the means of controlling." 

Burr never mentioned names, nor spoke in precise 
terms of his plans ; the results of his Western tour were 
exhibited to Merry only in broad outlines : 

'Throughout the Western country," said he, "persons 
of the greatest property and influence had engaged them- 
selves to contribute very largely towards the expense of 
the enterprise ; at New Orleans he represented the inhabi- 
tants to be so firmly resolved upon separating themselves 
from their union with the United States, and every 
way to be so completely prepared, that he was sure the 
revolution there would be accomplished without a drop 
of blood being shed, the American force in that country 
(should it not, as he had good reason to believe, enlist 
with him) not being sufficiently strong to make any 
opposition. It was accordingly there that the revolution 
would commence at the end of [March?] May^ or the 
beginning of April, provided his Majesty's government 
should consent to lend their assistance toward it, and the 
answer, together with the pecuniary aid which would be 
wanted, arrive in time to enable him to set out the begin- 
ning of March." 

Burr frequently recurred to the urgency of an early 
reply to his propositions, especially emphasizing the 
necessity of an early remittance of funds, for upon the 
arrival of the latter depended the march of his enter- 
prise. He insisted that the money should be got 

^Cf. Henry Adams, iii., 230. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 47 

secretly into his hands, as he indicated in his first over- 
tures; and suggested that he would himself devise a 
way to get into his possession, without its becoming 
known or suspected, a part of the two hundred thou- 
sand pounds which the United States were soon to pay 
to his Majesty's Government. In the end, failing in the 
first plan, proviso was made that one hundred and ten 
thousand pounds, which he now asked of Pitt, should 
be credited in the names of John Barclay of Philadel- 
phia and Daniel Clark of New Orleans. Burr endeav- 
ored to impress the Minister with the revolutionary 
state of affairs in Louisiana, bringing up again the ab- 
surd notion that the inhabitants, though descendants of 
French and Spanish parents, were anxious to cast off 
their traditional hostility to England and to embrace 
her in the new cause. 

"Mr. Burr stated to me — what I have reason to 
believe to be true from the information I have received 
from other quarters — that when he reached Louisiana he 
found the inhabitants so impatient under the American 
government that they had actually prepared a representa- 
tion of their grievances, and that it was in agitation to 
send deputies with it to Paris. The hope, however, of 
becoming completely independent, and of forming a much 
more beneficial connection with Great Britain, having 
been pointed out to them, and this having already pre- 
vailed among many of the principal people who are 
become his associates, they have found means to obtain 
a suspension of the plan of having recourse to France; 
but he observed that if the execution of that which he 
had in view should be delayed beyond the time he had 
mentioned the opportunity would be lost ; and France 
would, as he knew it positively to be her wish, regain 
that country and annex the Floridas to it." 

A more convincing presentation of tHe case could 



48 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

not have been made ; but the EngHsh Cabinet had cause 
to know that it was groundless — France was not then 
playing for such stakes. Burr, however, was ignorant 
of the situation of affairs in Europe and continued to 
press the argument, which had always been so potent, 
of the danger from French interference. Merry be- 
lieved the whole of the story, even to Burr's forecast 
of the dissolution of the Republic. 

"He observed, what I readily conceive may happen, 
that when once Louisiana and the Western country 
became independent, the Eastern States will separate 
themselves immediately from the Southern ; and that thus 
the immense power which is now risen up with so much 
rapidity in the western hemisphere will, by such a 
division, be rendered at once informidable ; and that no 
moment could be so proper for the undertaking in ques- 
tion and particularly for Great Britain to take part in it 
as the present, when she has the command of the ocean 
and France is prevented from showing that interference 
in the business which she would otherwise certainly 
exercise." 

Merry, while recommending the "practicability and 
great utility" of the project, thought that "his Majesty 
may have already been disposed to take part in the 
affair." Thus completely had the Minister been 
blinded. Burr, however, realized that the winning over 
of the British Cabinet was quite another matter. 
Indeed it appeared from the unbroken silence almost 
hopeless. So he turned to other quarters, still with a 
view to obtaining the moneys he calculated necessary 
for his purposes. While in Washington he was cor- 
dially received at the White House. Yrujo said that 
Jefferson both penetrated and feared him. Before leav- 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 49 

ing the Capital the ex- Vice-President wrote Blenner- 
hassett concerning his plans. December 21st the latter 
replied : 

"I hope, sir, you will not regard it indelicate in me 
to observe to you how highly I should be honored in 
being associated with you, in any contemplated enterprise 
you would permit me to participate in. . . . Viewing 
the probability of a rupture with Spain, the claim for 
action the country will make upon your talents, in the 
event of an engagement against, or subjugation of, any 
of the Spanish territories, I am disposed, in the confiden- 
tial spirit of this letter, to offer you my friends' and my 
own services to cooperate in any contemplated measures 
in which you may embark."^ 

To this flattering note Burr sent In reply an explicit 
definition of the nature of, his undertaking:'' 

"I had projected, and still meditate, a speculation 
precisely of the character you have described. . . . The 
business, however, depends, in some degree, on contin- 
gencies not within my control, and will not be commenced 
before December or January, if ever. . . . But I must 
insist that these intimations be not permitted to inter- 
rupt the prosecution of any plans which you have formed 
for yourself — no occupation which shall not take you off 
the continent can interfere with that which I propose. 
. . . We shall have no war unless we should be actually 
invaded." 

Burr's revelations to Blennerhassett left no doubt 
as to the object in view. The contingencies upon which 
the movement turned were a Spanish war or the receipt 
of pecuniary assistance either from Merry or Yrujo, or 

^Blennerhassett to Burr, Blennerhassett Papers, p. ii6. 
^Burr to Blennerhassett, April 15, 1806; Blennerhassett 
Papers, p. 119. 



50 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

other source. The single idea of the two notes, that of 
the conquest of Spanish regions, fired young and old 
alike ; it was therefore not surprising to find characters 
so divergent as Blennerhassett, Andrew Jackson, Clark, 
Wilkinson and General Presley Neville anxious to par- 
ticipate in whatever fortune should be allotted to the 
fascinating undertaking. All the while, too. Burr had 
the satisfaction of witnessing the increasing difficulties 
of the Government in its attempt to stem the flood of 
indignation against Spain. The Administration was 
severely criticized for its tardiness in taking up the 
gauntlet which Cevallos, as spokesman for the King, 
had cast at the feet of our Ministers. Said a plain- 
spoken editor of the Political and Commercial Regis- 
ter: 

"What is the situation of our governmental character 
with foreign powers? The United States, so lately the 
wonder and admiration of the world, are fallen so low, 
that even the Spaniard prowls on our defenseless mer- 
chantmen, and loudly proclaims the pusillanimity of our 
leader. What is the policy of the present Cabinet ? Why 
do they conceal their measures and the information they 
possess from the people who raised them to authority? 
Why veil from the public eye the treatment of our Min- 
isters at the court of Madrid? Do they fear that the 
people themselves will demand vengeance against the 
aggressors?"^ 

The United States Gazette observed that "we are 
to depend for our safety, for the enjoyment of our 
rights, not upon the wisdom and vigor of our Adminis- 
tration, nor upon the strength, nor the resources of our 
country, but upon the clemency and forbearance of 

^Orleans Gazette, September 27, 1805. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 51 

other nations."^ From one end of the RepubHc to the 
other the Government was decried for its attitude, 
whether it endeavored to conceal evidences of Spanish 
meanness, or tried to steer clear of the breakers of 
war. The President sought to ease matters by purchas- 
ing the Floridas. Though we claimed West Florida 
under the treaty for the sale of Louisiana, and had even 
passed a law regulating the collection of customs at 
Mobile, Jefferson thought the easiest way out of the 
embroglio was to pay out. But his plan encountered 
opposition in Congress. John Randolph, the one tow- 
ering figure in the House, strenuously opposed it ; and 
sharply arraigned the President for having a "double 
set of opinions and principles — the one ostensible, the 
other real." In the first case he appeared in his Mes- 
sage of December 3, 1805, to favor vigorous measures 
against Spain; in the second, three days later, he 
secretly appealed to Congress to appropriate moneys 
for the purchase of lands, a part of which he had pro- 
fessed to believe already ours. In the midst of the dis- 
cussion, January 3d, Randolph laid before the Repre- 
sentatives a spirited, warlike report based on the Mes- 
sage of December 3d. The closing resolution read that 
the Southern frontier was to be protected "from Span- 
ish inroad and insult." Indeed it went further : meas- 
ures were to be resorted to which meant, beyond perad- 
venture, conflict with Spain. By plying the party lash 
Jefferson succeeded in having Randolph's Resolution 
buried under a bill which carried with it $2,000,000 
for the purchase of the Floridas. The President had 

^Orleans Gazette, November 22, 1805. 



52 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

carried his point, but the report of such a bill provoked 
more than partisan rebuke throughout the Union. 

"There was a happy moment," ran a paragraph in the 
Orleans Gazette,"^ "when the government of the United 
States, with every plea of justice and necessity on its 
side, might, at a blow, have expelled the Spaniards from 
our shores. It required nothing but the sanction of 
authority, and the generous spirit of the nation, which 
had left far behind the nerveless soul of the Government, 
would have performed the business even without a 
reward. ... If the wise counsels of Federal men had 
been listened to, we should in the twinkling of an eye, 
as it were, have the rightful possession of those terri- 
tories, which form a natural and very important append- 
age of our own." 

Editor Bradford of the Orleans Gazette was an un- 
disguised revolutionist, and had admitted to his col- 
umns, at the time of Burr's first visit to the West, an 
article which might have been copied in part from the 
annals of the French Revolution:^ — 

"By a war she [Spain] would have everything to lose, 
and nothing to win. . . . To the east the Floridas 
would fall into our hands without opposition, and to the 
southwest. New Mexico, with all its wealth, opposes no 
obstacle to invasion. . . . This conquest would give us 
the key to the southern continent ; and the soldiers of 
Liberty, animated by the spirit of '76 and the genius of 
their Washington, would go to the field, not with a hope 
of plunder, but to avenge the cause of their country, and 
to give freedom to a new world. The innocent blood of 
the natives, which was so lavishly spilt by the merciless 
Cortez and Pizarro, yet calls aloud for vengeance, and 
the descendants of Montezuma and Mango Capac, would 
draw the avenging sword, ... on the first approach 

"^Orleans Gazette, March 28, 1806. 
^Orleans Gazette, May 24, 1805. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 53 

of an invading army. . . . Thus in eighteen months 
would the two continents own the dominion of laws." 

Bradford did not stand alone — there were many 
others in the States who saw the matter as he ; for the 
maxims of the French Revolution were still living 
forces. The morbid sentiment indulged over the con- 
dition of the inhabitants of the Spanish colonies is one 
more proof that nations are ofttimes blind to their own 
shortcomings. For why should charity not have begun 
at home in granting freedom to the negro slaves ? By 
this it is not meant to question the sincerity of the 
enthusiasm of the American mind for the emancipation 
of the colonies of Don Carlos. On the contrary, there 
is every reason to believe in the honesty of the desire ; 
but it was so intermingled with the lust for revenge 
against a sovereign whose territories were coveted, 
that the measure of its intensity is lost. 

Favorable, even flattering, the situation appeared 
to the leaders of the conspiracy. There were few who 
dreamed of the difliculties to be overcome ; of the need 
for money and the crying want thereof ; of prejudices 
and distempers to be combated, which were to prove 
fatal in the end. Perhaps only Dayton and Wilkinson 
were in the innermost secret, and aided in devising 
ways and means. Wilkinson drew from his own expe- 
perience, and the intrigues with Merry and Yrujo re- 
flect his handiwork, while he has left us convincing 
proof of his complicity in the enterprising design of 
defrauding both Spain and England. Scarcely had the 
conspiracy collapsed when Wilkinson confessed in a 
confidential dispatch to Jefferson : 



54 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

''No doubt remains with me that he [Burr] has duped 
both the British and Spanish legations and converted 
them to his use, by the promise of the subversion of our 
Government on the one hand, and the revolutionizing of 
Mexico on the other."^ 

The knowledge of the stratagem which was to be 
used with the Ministers was well employed by Wilkin- 
son when once he had begun his denunciations, for he 
was also aware that the country at large was con- 
founded by the mingling of the two sets of arguments. 

Although Dayton and Burr were unpractised in the 
art of extracting specie from foreign coffers, they 

> learned their lesson with so much facility that it was 
clear James Wilkinson had been their instructor. De- 
cember 1st, after his interviews with Merry, Burr 
reached Philadelphia whither Dayton had preceded 
him. There, December 5th, the Marquis of Caso Yrujo 
was secretly visited by Dayton, who was primed with 
an excellently prepared story which it was thought 
would bring Yrujo to the financial aid of the scheme. 
Dayton began by saying that he thought thirty or forty 
thousand dollars would not be an excessive sum to pay 
for certain events which were transpiring at London 
upon whose outcome hung the fate of the most precious 
possessions of the Spanish monarchy. Yrujo assured 
him that his master was liberal and would reward ser- 
vices. Thus encouraged the ex-Senator began by say- 
ing that he was one of three persons in this country 
who knew of the plot; that the Government was ig- 

^Wilkinson to Jefferson, February 13, 1807; Letters in Rela- 
tion to Burr's Conspiracy; MSS. State Department Archives. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 55 

norant of it, but not less concerned than Spain. Then 
he continued:^ — 

'Toward the close of the last session and the end of 
March, Colonel Burr had various secret conferences with 
the English minister, to whom he proposed a plan not 
only for taking the Floridas, but also for effecting the 
separation and independence of the States of the West, — 
a part of this plan being that the Floridas shall be associ- 
ated in this new federative republic; England to receive 
as a reward for her services a decisive preference in 
matters of commerce and navigation, these advantages 
to be secured by means of a treaty which will be made 
upon the recognition by England of this new republic. 
This plan met the approbation of the English minister, 
w^ho recommended it to his court. In the meantime 
Colonel Burr has been in New Orleans, in the Mississippi 
Territory, the States of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, 
to sound and prepare their minds for this revolution. In 
all these States he found their dispositions most favorable 
not only for their emancipation which they evidently 
desire, but also for leading an expedition against the 
Kingdom of Mexico. This is an idea that occurred to 
us after sending the first plan to London; and having 
given greater extension to the project, Colonel Burr sent 
to London a dispatch with his new ideas to Colonel Wil- 
liamson, an English officer who has been for a long time 
in this country, and whose return is expected within a 
month or six weeks. The first project was well received 
by the English Cabinet ; more particularly by Mr. 
Dundas, or Lord Melville, who was charged with the 
correspondence; but as he had reason to fear dismission 
from office for causes well known through the debates of 
Parliament, the plan has been retarded ; but Mr. Pitt has 
again turned his attention to it. In order to effect the 
conquest of the Floridas and the emancipation of the 
Western States half a million dollars has been appropri- 
ated ; the expedition on the part of England will be com- 
posed of three ships of the line and seven or eight smaller 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, December 5, 1805; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



S6 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

armed vessels which will bring arms, ammunition and 
artillery, but few men, as men were not needed." 

The conspirators never turned out a more palpably 
Y fictitious fabric. Yet with the strength of it Dayton 
f and Burr hoped to bind Yrujo to the project; and 
somehow to terrify Don Carlos into paying the ex- 
penses of an enterprise against his own possessions. 
The irony of it is fascinating. Yrujo was in a more 
treacherous situation than Merry. As for the latter, 
Burr employed his wiles to make him a catspaw to 
draw from the British treasury half a million dollars ; 
while the former was to contribute funds for a secret 
which had been contrived to entrap him, to disguise the 
real object of the association, and which would have 
been revealed to him in any case. If an assault was 
really to be made on the Spanish provinces, it was but 
plain foresight to disarm Yrujo, or better still to leave 
him nursing the idea that his Sovereign was aiding in 
the dispersion of the Power in the Western World 
which menaced the integrity of his Empire. 

The Marquis was assured that the Western States 
would declare themselves independent the moment the 
English squadron appeared off the coast of Florida in 
February or March ; that in order to make the revolu- 
tion more popular after having taken the Floridas the 
expedition against Mexico would be attempted; that 
Miranda had just been sent to this country by the Eng- 
lish Government to act in concert with Burr; that no 
opposition from the feeble Federal Government was an- 
ticipated ; that the United States troops were nearly all 
in the West, and that Colonel Burr had caused them to 



BURROS INTRIGUES 57 



be sounded in regard to the expedition against Mexico; 
that they were all ready to follow him and that there 
was no doubt they were also ready to support the rights 
of the Westerners against the impotent forces of the 
Federal Government. In the operations against Mex- 
ico, England would cooperate by sea; a landing would 
probably be made at Panuco. Dayton avowed that 
Burr had emissaries in the interior of the province of ^ 
Texas, and that he had sent some also to Vera Cruz 
and other points on the coast with the moneys which he 
had already received from England ; that he meant to 
convert into a republic or republics the Spanish prov- 
inces which should be conquered or revolutionized. 

Yrujo observed to Cevallos that the acquisition of 
Louisiana had rendered inevitable the separation of the 
West from the Union within the space of two years, 
and that the Floridas would succumb to the revolution. 
He was confident, however, that the Administration 
would not be deceived by the wiles of Burr. Yrujo's \ 
distrust of Dayton, whom he recognized as Burr's 
spokesman, was great. He saw at once that England 
had not encouraged the affair to the extent of a hundred 
thousand pounds, for, had she done so, Dayton would 
not have come to him, as he said to Cevallos, the alert 
Minister of State, to play the part of the "faithful 
thief, relating a secret, which, for many reasons, he 
was interested in concealing from him." Thus the 
main end sought had been accomplished — Yrujo no 
longer credited the prevailing rumors that Mexico was 
the objective point, for, had it been so, the conspirators 
would not have been guilty of the folly of making a 



> 



58 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

clean breast of it. However, partially successful though 
they had been, Burr and the ex-Senator feared they 
had gone too far ; so, when the latter returned to Phila- 
delphia from a fortnight in Washington he was pre- 
pared to unfold another story fantastic and absurd in 
the highest degree. But this time, singularly enough, 
Yrujo was completely taken in. 

After referring to Burr's resolve to have nothing to 
do with Miranda, whom he thought wanting in many 
qualities necessary to lead a great enterprise, Dayton 
made bold to say that the English end of the intrigue 
had met with reverses, hinting that negotiations in that 
quarter were abandoned; whereas we know the hopes 
of the conspirators in British aid were still high. Burr 
had been on the eve of dispatching to London an inti- 
mate by the name of Wharton, continued Dayton, to 
renew the negotiations, when another plan had sug- 
gested itself :' — 

"This project, excepting the attack on the Floridas, he 
[Burr] thinks, as well as his chief friends, may be put 
in execution without foreign aid. For one who does not 
know the country, its Constitution, and, above all certain 
localities, this plan would appear insane; but I confess, 
for my part, that in view of all the circumstances it seems 
easy of execution, although it would irritate the Atlantic 
States, especially those called central — namely, Virginia, 
Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
New York. It is indisputable that there is in this country 
an infinite number of adventurers, without property, full 
of ambition, and ready to unite at once under the standard 
of a revolution which promises to better their situation. 
It is almost certain that Burr and his friends, without dis- 
closing their true object, have won the good will of these 

^Yriijo to Cevallos, January i, 1806; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 59 



men and inspired them with the greatest confidence m 
favor of Burr, whose intrigues during the past year were 
devoted to the fanning of the flames of discord agamst 
the existing government in Louisiana and the Western 
States which he visited." 

Burr's "new idea," which Yrujo thought would 
"probably be carried into effect," was to introduce by 
degrees into the Federal city and its environs a certain 
number of his desperate followers, well armed, who, at 
a signal, with Burr at their head would surprise at the 
same instant the President, the Vice-President, and the 
President of the Senate. Burr would then dissolve the 
existing government, possess himself of the public 
money deposited in the Washington and Georgetown 
banks and seize the arsenal on the Eastern Branch. 
Profiting by the consternation such a blow would pro- 
duce, the conspirators would try to make favorable 
terms with the States ; but should they fail to maintain 
themselves at Washington, which seemed probable, they 
wotild burn the national vessels at the Navy Yards, ex- 
cept two or three frigates which were ready for sea, 
and embarking on these with the treasure, they would 
sail for New Orleans, where upon their arrival they 
would proclaim the independence of Louisiana and the 
West.' 

It would be as easy to believe in the truthfulness of 
one of Baron Miinchausen's tales as that Burr seri- 
ously contemplated so utterly harebrained an enterprise y 
as Dayton now revealed to the Marquis. If it had not 
already appeared indisputable that Yrujo was to be 

'Adams (iii., 239), McMaster (iii., fe), and others think that 
Burr actually meditated such a coup d'etat. 



¥ 



6o THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

deceived for a double purpose, it would be legitimate 
to inquire into Burr's sanity. That such a high-handed, 
buccaneering plot had the shadow of a chance to reach 
maturity could not have been believed by any one 
acquainted with American character, or the actual situ- 
ation of affairs. And yet Yrujo thought it certain of 
success, observing to Cevallos that ''Spain would view 
with extreme satisfaction the dismemberment of the 
colossal power which was growing up at the very gates 
of her most precious and important colonies." The 
great difficulty to be surmounted in the execution of 
this momentous project was ''the acquisition of half a 
million or a million dollars which the principals calcu- 
lated would be necessary to expend for provisions, 
arms, pay for men," et cetera. The solution was easy 
— Burr had offered to sell his services to Spain, and 
Yrujo intimated that the King ought to come to his aid, 
for the following reasons : 

'At a second conference with this subject [Dayton] 
he told me that Burr had authorized him to say that 
in this second project, which was the one determined 
upon, Spain had nothing to fear for her possessions ; 
that on the contrary he counted on her friendship because 
of her obvious interest in the success of the enterprise ; 
that the matter of the Louisiana boundary would be 
arranged to our entire satisfaction ; . . . that the 
Floridas would be undisturbed, not only out of respect 
for Spain, but because his political interest demanded that 
a foreign nation should hold possessions both in the 
Atlantic States and those of the West." 

For the moment Burr's success with Yrujo was as 
complete as it had been with Merry — and he had every 
cause to hope that he would yet receive financial succor 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 6i 

which would enable him to purchase ships, arms, and 
necessaries for the equipment of his expedition. So 
much was he encouraged with the situation that he 
wrote to Wilkinson, December 12th: 

"About the last of October our cabinet was seriously 
disposed for war with the Spaniards ; but more recent 
accounts of the increasing and alarming aggressions and 
annoyance of the British, and some courteous words from 
the French, have banished every such intention. In case 
of such warfare, Lee would have been commander-in- 
chief : truth I assure you : he must you know come from 
Virginia. . . . On the subject of a certain speculation, 
it is not deemed material to write till the whole can be 
communicated. The circumstance referred to in a letter 
from. Ohio remains in suspense : the auspices, however, 
are favorable, and it is believed that Wilkinson will give 
audience to a delegation composed of Adair and Dayton 

in February. Can 25 be had in your vicinity to 

move at some few hours' notification?"^ 

Burr regretted the peaceful course of Government 
— the non-materialization of the Spanish War ; and his 
characterization of the political status was eminently 
correct. Concerning a certain speculation — doubtless 
the intrigues with the Spanish and British ministers — 
he could only give Wilkinson hope. The reference to 
Adair and Dayton and the question as to the number of 
men which could be had were intelligible only to the 
General. 

While waiting for replies to the representations 
which had been made by Merry and Yrujo to their re- 
spective Governments, Burr continued to enlarge the 
circle of his associates. During the early months of 

^Burr to Wilkinson, December 12, 1806; Wilkinson's Mem- 
oirs, ii., Ap. Ixxxiv. 



62 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

1806 he approached Commodore Truxton with the 
proposition that he should command the naval arm of 
an expedition against Mexico; and to William Eaton, 
who was engaged in pressing before Congress a very 
doubtful claim to certain pecuniary restitutions, he laid 
bare not only the first plan, but also that which had so 
taken Yrujo : ''He would turn Congress neck and heels 
out of doors, assassinate the President (or what 
amounted to that),and declare himself the protector of 
an energetic Government." Believing in these hor- 
ribly criminal designs of the ex- Vice-President, some 
time in March Eaton called on the President and sug- 
gested that "Colonel Burr ought to be removed from 
the country" because he was dangerous in it. Either 
the post at Madrid or London was considered by Eaton 
a secure place for the exile of Mr. Burr. If anything 
could give rise to a suspicion of this infoimant's in- 
tegrity, it is this conversation wuth Jefferson. It was 
in March, too, that Burr applied in person to the Presi- 
dent for an appointment, which fact Jefferson notes in 
his "Anas" under date of April 15th. This coincident 
provokes the suspicion that Burr had bribed Eaton to 
prepare the ground for his personal application for a 
foreign appointment. Why were Madrid and London 
specified? Could Burr have planned to undertake at 
shorter range the intrigues which were then progress- 
ing with those courts ? It was either that or a ruse, for 
Burr must have known in advance what Jefferson^s 
reply would be. 'He had lost the confidence of the 
country, and could not be appointed,' were the Presi- 
dent's words. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 63 

In the middle of April, Burr wrote Blennerhassett 
that the business, which depended on contingencies 
beyond his control, would not begin until December or 
January, if ever.' To Wilkinson he said: 

"The execution of our project is postponed till Decem- 
ber : want of water in Ohio, rendered movement imprac- 
ticable : other reasons rendered delay expedient. The 
association is enlarged, and comprises all that Wilkinson 
could wish. Confidence limited to a few. . . . Burr 
wrote you a long letter last December, replying to a short 
one deemed very silly. Nothing has been heard from 
Brigadier since October. Is Cusion et Portes right? 
Address Burr at Washington.'"" 

"Cusion and Portes" were officers on the frontier, 
Wilkinson the "Brigadier" confessed ; but Burr's object 
was not so much to find out whether they were "right" 
as to impress the general with the fact that the associa- 
tion was enlarged and comprised all that he could wish. 
"Want of water in Ohio" was a clever way of saying 
that thus far he had failed in his purpose with Merry 
and Yrujo. 

While these things were occurring in the East the 
news of warlike preparations in Kentucky was making 
its way across Texas and the deserts of North Mexico 
to Captain-General Salcedo at Chihuahua. Early in 
1806 Antonio Cordero, Governor of the Province of 
Texas, had received notice that an expedition was 
being prepared in Kentucky which was to overrun the 
provinces of Mexico. This news had reached the Gov- 
ernor, not through the instrumentality of Yrujo, but 

^Blennerhassett Papers, p. ii8. 

^Burr to Wilkinson, April i6, 1806; Memoirs, ii., Ap. Ixxxiii. 



64 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

directly from the Spanish agents in Louisiana. The 
report was alarming. 

"It is a very grave matter," responded Salcedo, April 
9th/ ''the information which your excellency has received 
and transmitted to me — that some ten thousand men, 
subjects of the United States, are being prepared in Ken- 
tucky (Quint oq), with the object of overpowering the 
uninhabited provinces of this kingdom and our Indian 
allies, with no respect for the boundaries of Louisiana. 
You will therefore take extraordinary precautions 
toward putting the country in a good state of defense 
by bringing up all the auxiliaries." 

The obnoxious Intendant Morales who had aroused 
hot indignation in the United States by closing the 
port of New Orleans, wrote from Pensacola to Viceroy 
Iturrigaray, 'There exists in New Orleans a strong 
party whose object it is to revolutionize the Kingdom 
of Mexico, and the conditions on the frontier are en- 
tirely favorable to such a design." He stated also 
that he had been reliably informed that the revolution 
was to be materially abetted by means of emissaries and 
papers which were to be circulated throughout the 
country. Many ecclesiastics were in the plot, and many 
subjects were already won over.^ 

Again from the frontier came the note of alarm. 
Francisco Viana, Inspector-General of the troops in 
Texas, from his headquarters at Nacogdoches dis- 
patched to Cordero this message :^ — 

"The rumor grows that the American forces are 

^Salcedo to Cordero, April 9, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
"Morales to Iturrigaray, May 12, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
^Viana to Cordero, June 3, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 65 

gathering in Kentucky, and that our unpeopled lands, 
neophytes, and vassal Indians are to fall into their hands. 
And I have neither munitions, arms, provisions, nor 
soldiers wherewith to uphold our authority. I have 
despatched a corporal, a trader, and four soldiers to the 
Tejas Indians, asking that they arm as many as possible 
and come to my assistance." 

The truth was, New Spain was in a wretched con- 
dition, and Morales was clear-headed when he avowed 
that the situation was all the Americans could desire. 
But the most startling note in this correspondence was 
the unconscious revelation of the vital purpose of the 
enterprise. 

The disingenuous disclosures of Dayton had thus 
far produced only in part the desired effect. True, 
Yrujo had been thrown off his guard, but Cevallos had 
not been constrained to make the expected advances. 
New tactics were therefore devised, and Burr himself 
visited the Marquis in the final hope of obtaining funds 
and of leaving the minister in a helpless state of in- 
certitude. 

"The principal has opened himself to me," wrote 
Yrujo to Cevallos, May 14, 1806;^ "and his communica- 
tions have confirmed me in the idea not only of the possi- 
bility, but of the facility of the execution of the project 
under certain circumstances — to effect which pecuniary 
aid on our part and on that of France is wanted. I have 
been very circumspect in my answers and have not com- 
promised myself in any way ; and when I return to Spain 
next spring I shall be the bearer of all the plan with the 
details which may be wanted. There will also arrive 
in Spain, more or less simultaneously with me, though 
by different ways, two or three very respectable persons, 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, May 14, 1806; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



f 



66 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

both from Louisiana and from Kentucky and Tennessee, 
with the same object. They all consider the interests of 
those countries united and in conformity with those of 
Spain and France; but the principal, or more correctly 
the principals, here do not wish to open themselves to the 
Emperor Napoleon's minister [Turreau], as they have no 
confidence in him. Consequently, it will be proper either 
not to communicate the matter at all to that Government, 
or to do it with the request that its representative here 
remain uninformed ; for I repeat, they have no confidence 
in him, and this has been a condition imposed on me in 
the communications I have received." 

If Bellman's report to Madison and Jefferson con- 
cerning Burr's designs can be credited, Burr had di- 
vined Napoleon's project of absorbing not only Spain 
but also her American possessions, and hoped to gain 
for himself a slice of the crumbling empire.^ It was 
therefore but a part of wisdom to leave Napoleon, who 
was rising toward the zenith of his career, ignorant 
of any revolutionary scheme which threatened even re- 
motely to cross his own astounding plans. The pre- 
caution had been taken to ignore Turreau, but he knew 
nevertheless, through the press, which never ceased its 
speculations, of Burr's supposed enterprise for the sepa- 
ration of the States, and wrote his home Government 
concerning it. Mentioning Miranda's departure, he 
continued :^ — 

"The project of effecting a separation between the 
Western and Atlantic States marches abreast with this 
one. Burr, though displeased at first by the arrival of 
Miranda, who might reduce him to a secondary role, has 
set off again for the South, after having had several 

^Madison's Writings, ii., 393. 

^Adams's History of the United States, iii., 226. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 67 



conferences with the British minister. . . . This divi- 
sion of the confederated States appears to me inevitable, 
and perhaps less remote than is commonly supposed ; but 
would this event, which England seems to favor, be really- 
contrary to the interests of France?" 

Turreau thought the Government ignorant of 
Burr's intentions ; and yet Yrujo in a letter of the same 
date, February 13th, remarked, "It seems that the Gov- 
ernment have penetrated the project of Colonel Burr, 
and in reality I am apprehensive lest the French minis- 
ter fearing it prejudicial to his country has informed 
them." ^ It is amazing that such a perplexing con- 
fusion in political affairs could have existed. 

Having failed in his personal effort to drav^ 
from the Spanish minister a pecuniary response. Burr 
tried a last resort — he threatened Yrujo with abandon- 
ing his favorable attitude toward Spain and with taking 
up again the web of his English intrigue, whose en- 
tangling meshes involved the Floridas and Mexico. 
June 9th, Yrujo in some uneasiness wTote Cevallos on 
the subject. Burr had suddenly ceased to visit him, 
and Dayton explained that this was due to the fact that 
the new Government in England was anxious to under- 
take the matter, and that Burr believed it would be 
more liberal with money advances as well as offer better 
means of protection. Dayton said that Burr was draw- 
ing up supplementary instructions for Williamson, and 
that Bollman would sail within ten days for London 
to lay new propositions before the Ministry, and to in- 
vite cooperation in an attack on the Floridas. Dayton, 

'Yrujo to Cevallos, February 13, 1806; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 



4 



f 



68 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

still the "faithful thief," informed Yrujo that he had 
protested to Burr against his unprincipled ambition, 
and would oppose the attack on the Spanish possessions, 
which he deemed unjust and impolitic, in the Cabinet 
council which certain chiefs were to hold in New 
Orleans in the month of December, proximo. The ex- 
Senator suggested that the best way to banish such 
ideas from the heads of the leaders was to reenforce 
Pensacola and Mobile. 

While Yrujo believed to the last that the main de- 
sign of the associates was the division of the Union, 
he had warned the officials in the Spanish provinces to 
be on the alert against surprise. He had, moreover, 
given Dayton encouragement in the substantial form of 
fifteen hundred dollars, and in soliciting for him from 
the King one thousand more along with a pension of 
fifteen hundred a year.^ The pension was denied, but 
the Minister was licensed to pay Dayton, who had in- 
deed demanded much larger sums, another thousand 
dollars. That was as far as Cevallos was disposed to 
go. He saw instantly that England had not espoused 
the cause of Burr, for at the moment Napoleon was 
free from Continental dangers and England was mak- 
ing preparations for the defense of her own shores. 
Cevallos further hinted that Dayton had a greater in- 
terest in "selling" the secret than in keeping it,^ but in 
a later communication intimated to Yrujo that if the 
United States were determined to war with Spain 
some use might be made of the malcontents. The 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, February 13, 1806; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 

'Cevallos to Yrujo, February 3, 1806; MSS. Spanish Archives. 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 69 

minister, however, was warned against committing 
himself or contributing money,^ and finally in July a 
few positive lines declared that his Majesty did not 
wish to protect the designs of Burr.^ Interested as 
Cevallos and Godoy were by Yrujo's dispatches, they 
scented danger in the obviously deceitful intrigue. The 
truth was, Spain had her hands already full, and it 
would have been fatuous for her to have become in- 
volved in an adventure in the wilds of America which 
might have led to further reprisals. 

On the side of Great Britain a worse outcome at- 
tended the endeavors of the conspirators. For almost 
two years Burr had maintained relations with Merry, 
but at the end he had only his good wishes — not one of 
the cabinets had even so much as deigned to reply to 
his solicitations. And to close this phase of Burr's 
consummate intrigue, Merry was recalled by Charles 
James Fox, Chief in the "Ministry of all the Talents," 
who sent out in his place David Montague Erskine. 
In one of the last dispatches of Merry, dated Novem- 
ber 2, 1806, he related the incidents of his parting 
interview with Burr :^ — 

"I saw this gentleman [Burr] for the last time at this 
place [Washington] in the month of June last, when he 
made particular inquiry whether I had received any 
answer from my Government to the propositions he had 
requested me to transmit to them, and lamented exceed- 
ingly that I had not, because he, and the persons con- 
nected with him at New Orleans, would now, though 

^Cevallos to Yrujo, March 28, 1806; MSS. Spanish Archives. 
^Cevallos to Yrujo, July 12, 1806; MSS. Spanish Archives. 
^Merry to C. J. Fox, November 2, 1806; MSS. British 
Archives. 



70 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

very reluctantly, be under the necessity of addressing 
themselves to the French and Spanish governments. He 
added, however, that the disposition of the inhabitants of 
the Western country, and particularly Louisiana, to sepa- 
rate themselves from the American Union was so strong 
that the attempt might be made with every prospect of 
success without any foreign assistance whatever; and 
his last words to me were that, with or without such 
support, it certainly would be made very shortly. From 
these and other circumstances I have little or no doubt of 
this enterprise being upon the point of execution. From 
a circumstantial statement of the letter to which I have 
alluded in my other dispatch, of a large sum of money 
having arrived in the Western country from New 
Orleans, it may be inferred, that offers have been made 
to France and Spain, and that they are lending their 
assistance to the undertaking. There seems also reason 
to suspect that the arrival of so large a body of Spanish 
troops and the force which is expected added to the 
present state of inactivity may well be connected with 
the object." 

Merry marveled that the Government should have 
remained ''so long in ignorance of the intended design." 
It was equally marvelous that after his long acquaint- 
ance with Burr he should have thought him acting in 
concert with France and Spain. The truth w^as that 
Merry with all his information was more ignorant of 
what was actually brewing than Jefferson; and it 
would have been far more ingenuous to have confessed 
that he was now satisfied that Burr, from his conflict- 
ing stories, was untrustworthy, and that his object was 
involved in mystery. But Merry never awakened to 
the fact that the deception practiced on him had been 
complete. 

Disastrous as his intrigues had proved in the East 



BURR'S INTRIGUES 71 

Burr was nothing daunted, and set about raising funds 
from various individuals, among others Blennerhassett, 
Smith and Ogden of Miranda fame, and his own son- 
in-law, Joseph Alston of South Carolina, rich in slaves 
and plantations. In this way it was hoped enough 
might be collected to start the expedition, and for the 
rest, the spoils of the territories of Spain would make 
provision. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Plans and Preparations 

WHEN the summer of 1806 was well Under 
way it was plain to Burr that his hope of 
deluding England into advancing money for 
his project must be abandoned; likewise the failure 
of the imposture tried on Yrujo no longer admitted of 
doubt. The only ray of consolation came from the 
far West where the Spaniards were reported to be 
encroaching on American soil. The cry of war again 
rang through the country ; and it soon became known 
that specific orders had been sent to General Wilkinson 
to drive the enemy beyond the Sabine at any cost — and 
that meant the beginning of the long-delayed struggle ! 
The match for igniting the conflict was in the hands 
V^J of General Wilkinson — would he apply it ? Both Day- 
l ton and Burr were doubtful. Whether he would con- 
tinue his part or desert it depended wholly on circum- 
stances. They knew he would act for what appeared 
to be his own advantage, regardless of affiliations or 
oaths, regardless of traditions or friendships. They 
had from their intimate association with him learned 
his weaknesses, and it was only by pandering to them 
that they hoped to retain his allegiance. He had writ- 
ten rarely, had raised objections, and had made condi- 
tions which were seemingly hard to overcome. He had 
sent a letter to Burr in October, 1805, which was 
"deemed very silly"; and finally another dated May 

72 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 73 

13th which Burr alleged that he destroyed at Wilkin- 
son's request. The General was at the moment dis- 
patching troops to the Sabine frontier and expecting to 
be ordered thither himself. That he would there pre- 
cipitate — legitimately or otherwise — the conflict was 
the anxious hope of the leading conspirators, who now 
proceeded to alarm him for his office, which the Presi- 
dent vras on the verge of assigning to another, and to 
beguile him with fictions as to the means and assistance 
which were expected. All the false batteries of Burr p 
and Dayton were trained on Wilkinson's position. 
Flagrant as the procedure was, they had gone too far 
to retreat. To the General Dayton wrote briefly, and 
his nephew, Peter V. Ogden, was intrusted with the 
letter, which was dated July 24th : 

''It is now well ascertained that you are to be dis- 
placed in next session. Jefferson will affect to yield ^ 
reluctantly to the public sentiment, but yield he will. ""^ 
Prepare yourself, therefore, for it. You know the rest. 
You are not a man to despair, or even despond, especially 
when such prospects offer in another quarter. Are you 
ready? Are your numerous associates ready? Wealth 
and glory! Louisiana and Mexico! I shall have time 
to receive a letter from you before I set out for Ohio — 
Ohio." 

With Ogden went Samuel Swartwout, the younger 
brother of Robert, marshal of New Yo'rk, who bore a 
letter from Burr to Wilkinson, which is celebrated as 
being the key to the conspiracy. Its date was July 
29th. The original version of it will never be known, 
as it w^as altered and deciphered in various ways by 
Wilkinson, who, four months after its receipt, auda- 
ciously said to Jefferson, "I have not yet taken time to 



74 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

render [it] to my satisfaction."^ Such an admission 
was rendered more astonishing by his subsequent false 
swearing concerning it at Richmond. The famous 
document, as it is generally accepted, reads as fol- 
lows : — 

"Your letter, postmarked thirteenth May, is received. 
At length I have obtained funds, and have actually com- 
menced. The Eastern detachments, from different points 
and under different pretences, will rendezvous on the 
Ohio first of November. Everything internal and ex- 
ternal favors our views. Naval protection of England 
is secured. Truxton is going to Jamaica to arrange with 
the admiral on that station. It will meet us at the Missis- 
sippi. England, a navy of the United States, are ready 
to join, and final orders are given to my friends and fol- 
lowers. It will be a host of choice spirits. Wilkinson 
shall be second to Burr only ; Wilkinson shall dictate the 
rank and promotion of his officers. Burr will proceed 
westward first August, never to return. With him goes 
his daughter ; her husband will follow in October, with a 
corps of worthies. Send forthwith an intelligent and 
confidential friend with whom Burr may confer ; he shall 
return immediately with further interesting details; this 
is essential to concert and harmony of movement. Send 
a list of all persons known to Wilkinson west of the 
mountains who could be useful, with a note delineating 
their characters. By your messenger send me four or 
five commissions of your officers, which you can borrow 
under any pretence you please; they shall be returned 
faithfully. Already are orders given to the contractor to 
forward six months' provisions to points Wilkinson may 
name; this shall not be used until the last moment, and 
then under proper injunctions. Our object, my dear 
friend, is brought to a point so long desired. Burr guar- 
antees the result with his life and honor, with the lives 
and honor and the fortunes of hundreds, the best blood 
of our country. Burr's plan of operation is to move down 

^Wilkinson to Jefferson, Feb. 17, 1807; Letters in Relation. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 75 

rapidly from the Falls, on the fifteenth of November, with 
the first five hundred or a thousand men, in light boats 
now constructing for that purpose; to be at Natchez 
between the fifth and fifteenth of December, there to meet 
you ; there to determine whether it will be expedient in 
the first instance to seize on or pass by Baton Rouge. On 
receipt of this send Burr an answer. Draw on Burr for 
all expenses, etc. The people of the country to which we 
are going are prepared to receive us ; their agents, now 
with Burr, say that if we will protect their religion, and 
will not subject them to a foreign Power, that in three 
weeks all will be settled. The gods invite us to glory and 
fortune ; it remains to be seen whether we deserve the 
boon. The bearer of this goes express to you. He is a 
man of inviolable honor and perfect discretion, formed 
to execute rather than project, capable of relating facts 
with fidelity, and incapable of relating them otherwise ; 
he is thoroughly informed of the plans and intentions of 
Burr, and will disclose to you as far as you require, and 
no further. He has imbibed a reverence for your char- 
acter, and may be embarrassed in your presence ; put him 
at ease, and he will satisfy you." 

This letter has been grossly misinterpreted. With 
all Burr's misrepresentations there is not the faintest 
hint that New Orleans was to be sacrificed ; no allusion 
to a convention which was to be called for the purpose 
of declaring the independence of the Western States — 
a point which had borne great weight in the Spanish 
and English intrigues ; — but we are told plainly that an 
attack was to be made on the Spanish possessions, pos- 
sibly beginning with West Florida at Baton Rouge. 
If policy dictated, wdiich Wilkinson was to decide, that 
Baton Rouge should remain unmolested, they would 
pass on — and to no other place than Mexico. "The 
people of the country to which we are going are pre- 
pared to receive us; their agents, now with Burr, say 



76 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

that if we will protect their religion, and will not sub- 
ject them to a foreign power, that in three weeks all 
will be settled." There had been Spanish agents with 
Burr, and one Fernandez had contracted in Philadel- 
phia for a quantity of type destined for Mexico and cast 
for the Spanish language/ And we shall see that thei;e 
were other Mexicans interested in the cause. It was 
only in the matter of his resources that Burr attempted 
deception. 

Toward the end of July, Ogden and Swartwout 
started on their journey. A little later Bollman sailed 
for New Orleans bearing a duplicate of Burr's letter 
to Wilkinson, which the General received in due season. 
The first week in August, Burr — accompanied by his 
daughter, a Colonel De Pestre, who had suffered in the 
French Revolution, and who now lived in New Jersey, 
and a few friends and servants — followed Ogden and 
Swartwout over the Alleghanies. While stopping in 
Pittsburg, August 22d, Burr and De Pestre visited 
Colonel George Morgan, who resided near Cannons- 
burg, fifteen miles distant; there, during the progress 
of the dinner, Burr talked volubly. The Morgans 
afterwards testified that he observed that with two 
hundred men the President and Congress could be 
driven into the Potomac ; that with five hundred New 
York City might be taken; and also, they admitted, 
averred in a jocular way that a "separation of the 
States must ensue as a natural consequence in four or 
five years."^ 

^Duane to Jefferson, December 8, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 
^Carpenter's Trial of Burr, i., 497. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 77 

Apart from the utter nonsense of the first two 
propositions — which no sane man could have seriously 
uttered — a natural separation of the States in the 
course of time was not in harmony with Burr's precipi- 
tate measures. When Burr had gone, Colonel Morgan 
invited the Chief- Justice of Pennsylvania, Presley 
Neville, and Samuel Roberts to hear his account of the 
meeting with the ex-Vice-President. The two latter 
wTote conjointly to Madison that "To give a correct 
written statement of these conversations would perhaps 
be as unnecessary as it would be difficult. . . . Indeed, 
according to our informants, much more was to be cal- 
culated from the manner in which things were said, 
and hints given, than from the words used." While 
predicting the separation of the States in the course of 
four or five years, Burr also spoke of a wide field about 
to be opened for talented and military men.^ The Mor- 
gans forgot to relate this fact at Richmond.^ More- 
over, George Morgan, in a letter to the President in 
January, 1807, after referring to the incident of the 
above meeting in which '^I and my sons had opened to 
them [Neville and Roberts] our opinions of Colonel 

^Neville and Roberts to Madison, October 7, 1806; Letters 
in Relation. 

^The Morgans went out of their way to show the President 
that they were his humble servants. When the trial was over at 
Richmond they returned through Washington and left a note at 
the White House : "The three Morgans of Morganza have, from 
respect for Mr. Jefferson, called at his residence although know- 
ing him to be from the city." It may be interesting to note that 
this family had once attempted to found a colony at New Madrid, 
a site opposite the mouth of the Ohio, under the aegis of the 
Spanish Crown; and had been vainly pressing before Congress 
since 1784 a claim to lands in Indiana, said to have been bought 
of the Indians. (Journal of Congress, iv., 341.) Was it possible 
they had seized this opportunity to curry favor with Jefferson? 



78 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 



Burr's views,"^ questioned the patriotism of Neville, 
soldier of the Revolution and leader of the forces sent 
by President Washington to quell the Pennsylvania 
riots. Neville had established a rendezvous for the 
"genteelly disaffected," Morgan likewise noted that it 
was said a former aide of his was frequently there; and 
that— 

"a Mr. Spence or Spencer, of the American navy, has 
lately been with him [Neville], and declared the disaffec- 
tion of every officer in it. Being too far advanced in life 
to take an active part in these inquiries, I leave them to 
my sons ; who, I am happy to say, have imbibed the prin- 
ciples of their father and of Thomas Jefferson from the 
commencement of our revolutionary war to the present 
day." 

Leaving Pittsburg, Burr and party continued to 
Belpre, and at the appointed time set foot on the island 
in the Ohio, where a most enthusiastic reception was 
tendered them. Blennerhassett, who had devoted his 
life to science and music, had been at last called into 
action by his failing fortune and maturing family. He 
had, apart from his island property, about thirty thou- 
sand dollars invested ; but from this he derived so little 
income that he was always pressed for money. He 
was eager to reestablish himself by some bold stroke of 
speculation. Such an opportunity Burr at once pre- 
sented in the purchase of the Washita lands, a Spanish 
grant to Baron Bastrop, in the heart of Louisiana — 
areas in time to be worth their millions. Moreover, be- 
yond this positive investment was another and greater 
possibility. In the contingency of a war with Spain, 

^Morgan to Jefferson, January 19, 1807; Letters in Relation. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 79 

which was deemed inevitable, from the position they 
should occupy on the frontier, the route was open to 
the wealth and empire of Mexico. Blennerhassett was 
captivated, borne away with the promise of things. 
Preparations were begun without delay; the last days 
of August found Burr and his associate in Marietta, 
where they purchased, through the firm of Dudley 
Woodbridge & Company, one hundred barrels of pork 
and let the contract to Colonel Barker — whose estab- 
lishment was seven miles above the town on the Mus- 
kingum — for fifteen boats to be delivered the ninth of 
December. This fact alone explodes the oft-repeated 
statement that Burr planned to move down the Ohio 
by November i5th.^ 

During one of these visits to Marietta, early in 
September, Blennerhassett showed Woodbridge a map 
of Mexico, "stating its advantages, wealth, fertility, 
and healthiness," and asked him to join the expedi- 
tion. Woodbridge inferred from this, he said at the 
trial,^ that the enterprise was aimed at Mexico. Blen- 
nerhassett in his prison at Richmond, when told of 
this evidence, set down in his Journal, "He has not yet 
told all the truth — having suppressed my communica- 
tion to him of our designs being unequivocally against 
Mexico." 

The island became forthwith the center of multi- 
farious activities. A kiln was erected for drying corn, 
which was ground into meal and made ready for 
shipment ; goods were purchased ; and the effects of the 

^Cf. Adams, iii., 268. 
'Carpenter's Trial, i., 518. 



8o THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

household were packed in preparation for removal, 
for Mrs. Blennerhassett and the two sons were also 
going. Blennerhassett, in his enthusiasm, talked much 
of the expedition which was to make them all rich; 
and shortly there were many as enthusiastic as Blenner- 
hassett himself. 

"A number of young men," said a correspondent of 
Pittsburg, ''inhabitants of this town, amounting to seven, 
have set out with an intention to join Colonel Burr in 
his expedition against Mexico, among whom is Morgan 
Neville, son of General Presley Neville, and it is said, 
with the knowledge and consent of his father. . . . 
Also Thomas Butler, son of the late Colonel Butler ; Mr. 
Forward, printer and editor of the Tree of Liberty, and 
publisher of the United States laws by authority, after 
having made preparations was prevented from going by 
sickness. . . . General Neville has used his influence 
to promote it. Wilkins and his sons warmly advocated 
it." ^ 

To this paragraph the editor of the National Intel- 
ligencer appended the following comment : 

"From the above letter it would seem that some of 
the first characters in Pittsburg are implicated in the Burr 
conspiracy. But we cannot believe that they would ever 
engage in a treasonable plot against their country. Colonel 
Neville was a conspicuous character in our Revolutionary 
War — he was an aide to the Marquis de La Fayette and 
in every situation in which he was placed has discharged 
his trust with fidelity to his country and honor to himself. 
. . . Yet the sons of those men are said to be concerned, 
and that too with the knowledge of their fathers. If 
this be the case, we cannot believe any treason is con- 
templated. Men of tried worth and known patriotism 
would never tarnish their well-earned reputations and 

^Orleans Gazette, January 27, 1807, 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 8i 



risk their all in an enterprise in which they have nothing 
to gain, and where their lives would be jeopardized." 

Apart from the enlistment of recruits and manifold 
duties, Blennerhassett is credited v^ith having contrib- 
uted a series of articles to the Ohio Gazette setting 
forth the expediency of a separation of the Western 
from the Eastern States. By whomever written, the 
articles could hardly have been issued in the interest of 
the conspiracy. For what service was a cold, cogent 
piece of argumentation — whose conclusion w^as that in 
the course of years natural causes would sever the West 
from the rest of the Union — expected to render the 
project of Burr, which, from all indications, was not to 
undergo a period of incubation ? 

Meantime Burr had traveled many miles. Septem- 
ber 4, 1806, he entered Cincinnati, and became the 
guest of John Smith. He remained there several days, 
talking much of his settlement on the Washita, of the 
threatening w^ar, and of the expedition to Mexico. 
The intriguer next crossed the Ohio to Lexington, and 
then passed into Tennessee, stopping again with An- 
drew Jackson. The approaching Spanish war was on 
every tongue. Parton says, "Every militiaman in the 
West was furbishing his accoutrements and awaiting 
the summons to the field." At a public dinner given 
Burr in Nashville, September 27th, Jackson offered the 
old toast: "Millions for defense; not one cent for 
tribute." 

Scarcely had the ex- Vice-President reached Lex- 
ington on his return when Jackson's proclamation of 
October 4th to the Tennessee militia appeared in print. 



82 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

He stated that the menacing attitude of the Spanish 
forces "already encamped within the Hmits of our Gov- 
ernment" required that the miHtia should be ready for 
instant duty. He recited that the enemy had captured 
several citizens of the United States ; had cut down our 
flag in the Caddo nation ; had compelled a party in the 
employ of the Government to return fromx exploring 
the Red River; "and had taken up an unjustifiable and 
insulting position east of the river Sabine, in the Terri- 
tory of Orleans." War was regarded as all but begun. 
Jackson communicated to the President his willingness 
to serve the country, and those who have followed his 
career know what that willingness meant. Jefferson 
replied December 3d to this first volunteer for the 
Spanish war '} — 

"Always a friend to peace, and believing it to pro- 
mote eminently the happiness and prosperity of mankind, 
I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed as long 
as the rights and interests of the nation can be preserved. 
But whenever hostile aggressions on these require a 
resort to war, we must meet our duty, and convince the 
world that we are just friends and brave enemies." 

Jefferson chose still to philosophize, to remain non- 
committal; but to have been frank he ought to have 
said to Jackson that for the present all idea of war 
with Spain had been abandoned ; that orders had gone 
forward to Wilkinson on the Sabine to remain abso- 
lutely on the defensive, and that he believed a truce 
had already been agreed upon by the contending 
armies. 

^Jefferson to Jackson, December 3, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 83 

The first week in October Burr met at Lexington 
Blennerhassett, Theodosia Alston and her husband. 
They had come away from the island, leaving it in the 
care of Mrs. Blennerhassett. Henceforth Lexington 
w^as to be the rendezvous, and there the organization 
was to be perfected. The purchase of the Bastrop 
lands was now effected. 

While Louisiana was under the Spanish flag, Baron 
de Bastrop had secured the grant of a tract of land, 
comprising about one million acres, situated in what is 
now North Louisiana on the Washita (Ouachita) 
River. Three-fifths of this had been obtained by 
Colonel Charles Lynch of Kentucky; but there were 
still some outstanding debts against the grant which he 
could not meet. At this juncture Burr contracted to 
take the whole under the following stipulations: 
"Colonel Burr was to pay Edward Livingston," testi- 
fied Lynch,^ "the amount of my purchase ; he also paid 
me four or five thousand dollars in money, and was to 
take up certain paper which I valued at thirty thousand 
dollars more." The deeds were recorded in Lexington, 
and now in truth a long step forward in the programme 
had been made. 

The possession of the W^ashita lands was a matter 
of secondary importance, and to be made use of only 
in case of emergency. Should the Government suspect 
them in their designs on Mexico, they would draw the 
cloak of settler about themselves ; should the Spaniards 
drive them back, they were citizens of a Republic capa- 
ble of defending them. It was above all something tan- 

^Evidence of Colonel Lynch, Annals of Congress, 1807-08, 
p. 657. 



84 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 



gible: to the farmer, wide bottom lands with a rich 
market in New Orleans ; to the trader, unknown tribes 
of Indians; to the daring, unexplored forests; to the 
adventurers, a rendezvous bordering the El Dorados 
of the Spanish provinces, whence they might sally 
when occasion offered. Glittering possibilities ! 

Recruits were now daily added to the list, and all 
attempts to disguise the purpose of the associates aban- 
doned. 'The impression," says Putnam,^ "to some ex- 
tent prevailed that Burr's movement and purposes had 
some sanction of the general Government, and that in 
so far as they were directed against the crafty enemies 
of the Western settlements they deserved to meet with 
cooperation." According to Jefferson, Burr would ap- 
proach men, propose his scheme, and, if they did not 
care to engage unless the Government approved, he 
would show a forged letter purporting to be from Dear- 
born, which countenanced the expedition, and add that 
because of the President's absence he had not sanc- 
tioned it.^ In a letter of January 3, 1807, to Wilkinson 
Jefferson said that persons had been enlisted with the 
"express assurance that the projected enterprise was 
against Mexico, and secretly authorized by this Gov- 
ernment. Many expressly enlisted in the name of the 
United States."^ That statement approximated the 
truth, if indeed it were not wholly true. Calculating 
on war. Burr knew the expedition would be counten- 
anced; or, if peace ensued. Government might over- 

^Putnam's History of Middle Tennessee, p. 581. 
Jefferson to Hay, June 5, 1807; Jefferson MSS. 
^Jefferson to Wilkinson, January 3, 1807; Annals of Con- 
gress, 1807-08, p. 580. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 85 

look the preparations as in the case of Miranda. Says 
Perkins in his Annals of the West, "It appears that he 
[Burr] meant to invade Mexico, whether war or peace 
ensued between Spain and the United States." Gra- 
ham, the Government's agent, who followed Burr 
southward, also bore witness to this purpose in the 
people, the following interview with Burr taking place 
at Natchez :^ — 

"I mentioned to Colonel Burr that I had heard in the 
Western country of a considerable number of men, per- 
haps two thousand, being collected for the purpose of 
invading Mexico. His reply was that he supposed that 
event was in the case of war with Spain. I told him 
no, that I had not understood it as depending on that 
condition." 

Had Burr at that moment been confronted with his 
three maps,^ left in the possession of Dr. Cummins, he 
would have been put to some confusion to explain upon 
what contingency he had calculated to lead his expedi- 
tion to Mexico. There is no hushing such clamorous 
witnesses, and Burr must have confessed that he had 
counted primarily on Wilkinson and war, and finally 
on the silent acquiescence of the authorities. The 
secret of these maps in broad outline is this : that noth- 
ing less than the Empire of Spain in North America 
was at stake. One map shows that Empire stretch- 
ing away to the Californias and to the Isthmus; the 
second is an admiralty chart of the Gulf coast of that 
country, indicating inlets, islands, and depths, which 
could have been of service only to a sea expedition; 

^Testimony of John Graham, Annals of Congress, 1807-08, 
p. 490. 

^Consult maps in the possession of Mrs. T. C. Wordin. 



86 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

the third (here reproduced) tells its tale in the de- 
tailed topographical description of the region between 
Vera Cruz and Mexico City! Wilkinson, Adair, 
Truxton, and others confessed that Vera Cruz was 
the objective point of the sea expedition — the maps 
reinforce them. Had Burr's project gone forward, the 
world might have been treated to a spectacle in some of 
its aspects recalling the story of Cortez. For was not 
Burr to profit by internal dissensions to conquer the 
land where for three centuries the Spaniards had ruled 
as tyrants? And were not the men he hoped to lead 
of that rare breed known as adelantados and conquis- 
tadores — adventurers and filibusters? 

The absorbing plan of invading the Spanish posses- 
sions was to be determined by force and opportunity. 
The idea of penetrating the neighboring territories, 
of making conquests of them, was in the air of the 
time, and not due in the remotest sense to the influ- 
ence of Burr. He strove merely for its embodiment. 
Though he failed, history emphatically shows that his 
plans were opportune, and that their wreck was due 
to influences he had failed properly to estimate, and 
chiefly to the conduct of James Wilkinson. The Span- 
iards believed the conspiracy to have had a continuous 
existence, crediting it with the revolutionizing of West 
Florida in 1810, and a little later with having served as 
the inspiration for the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition,^ 
which wrought such irremediable destruction in the 
Province of Texas, and which had set out with such 

^See Texas Historical Quarterly for January, 1901 : "The 
First Period of the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition." 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 87 

high hopes of cooperating in the revolution which 
raged beyond the Rio Grande. It was in the opening 
year of our second war with Great Britain that — de- 
spite the fact that there was room in the army for all 
warlike characters — adventurers and revolutionists to 
the number of five hundred gathered along the Louisi- 
ana frontier and in the Neutral Ground, marched 
across Texas, annihilated three royalist armies, and 
held the province until dissensions prepared them for 
destruction. That Burr planned, in case of necessity, to 
make a "neutral ground" of his Bastrop lands scarcely 
admits of doubt ; many of the followers of Magee had 
been his loyal partisans; and those who joined in the 
filibustering enterprises which swept westward for the 
next half century were his disciples. 

Pursuing his tactics Burr wrote to Governor Harri- 
son with the evident intention of exciting him, as he 
had Jackson, to issue a proclamation to the militia. To 
keep the aggression of the enemy before the people was 
to raise higher their passions. 

"By the hands of my friend and relative. Major West- 
cott," he said under date of October 24th, "you will 
receive a newspaper containing the orders lately issued 
by General Jackson to the militia of West Tennessee, 
being the division under his command. It occurred to 
me that you might deem something similar to be 
addressed to the militia of Indiana not inexpedient at 
this moment, and that the perusal of this production 
might be acceptable. All reflecting men consider a war 
with Spain to be inevitable ; in such an event, I think you 
would not be at ease as an idle spectator. If it should be 
my lot to be employed, which there is reason to expect. 



88 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

it would be my highest gratification to be associated with 
you." ^ 

As yet everything was going well; not only were 
boats being built, provisions being gathered, and re- 
cruits being prepared, but fate even seemed to declare 
for Burr. Every day brought more warlike tidings 
from the Sabine; newer encroachments and insults of 
the foe, and greater prospect of a violent clash between 
the American and Spanish armies which now stood 
facing each other across the Arroyo Hondo. It is plain 
from his letter to Governor Harrison that Burr mo- 
mentarily expected Wilkinson to redeem his pledge 
that a war could and would be brought about. Upon 
the receipt of such news Burr's banner would be raised, 
and Harrison, Davis Floyd, Adair, and Jackson would 
each muster a regiment for an independent army des- 
tined for Mexico. 

October 6th, two days after the appearance of Jack- 
son's proclamation, a mass meeting of the citizens of 
Wood County, Virginia, under whose jurisdiction was 
Blennerhassett's island, condemned the ''apparently 
hostile movements and designs of a certain character 
[Burr]." Resolutions were passed expressing their 
attachment to the President of the United States ; and 
it was ordered that a corps of militia should be raised 
to act in case of emergency. ^ 

Blennerhassett was absent in Kentucky, having 
gone there with the Alstons in the furtherance of the 
conspiracy, when these hostile expressions were uttered. 

^Clark's Proofs, Ap., p. i6. 

^Moniteur de la Louisiane, December 31, 1806. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 89 

His absence, however, did not deter the boisterous 
mihtiamen from threatening a reprisal upon the island. 
Mrs. Blennerhassett became uneasy and sent her gar- 
dener, Peter Taylor, in search of her husband. Octo- 
ber 20th he set out. On his way he stopped in Cincin- 
nati to inquire of Senator John Smith the whereabouts 
of Blennerhassett. Smith, having become alarmed at 
the malignant rumors in circulation, seized the op- 
portunity to send a note to Burr demanding an ex- 
planation. 

"I was greatly surprised and really hurt by the un- 
usual tenor of your letter of the 23d," Burr vouchsafed 
in answer to the Senator,^ "and I hasten to reply to it, 
as well for your satisfaction as my own. If there exists 
any design to separate the Western from the Eastern 
States, I am totally ignorant of it. I never harbored or 
expressed any such intention to any one, nor did any 
person ever intimate such design to me.'^ 

From Cincinnati Taylor rode to Lexington, where, 
according to his own story, he saw Burr for the first 
time, and opened his acquaintance with the warning, 
"If you come up our way, the people will shoot you." 
Taylor's account of this meeting is sufficient to dis- 
credit him utterly. On the other hand, it is plain from 
his evidence that Blennerhassett had told him what 
was reserved for those in the innermost circle of the 
associates. They were "going to take Mexico, one of 
the finest and richest places in the whole world." 

"Colonel Burr would be the King of Mexico, and 
Mrs. Alston, daughter of Colonel Burr, was to be Queen 
of Mexico, whenever Colonel Burr died. He said that 

^Burr to Smith, October 26, 1806; Senate Reports, p. 33. 



90 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

Colonel Burr had made fortunes for many in his time, 
but none for himself ; but now he was going to make 
something for himself. He said that he had a great many 
friends in the Spanish territory; no less than 2,000 
Roman Catholic priests were engaged, and that all their 
friends too would join, if once he could get to them ; that 
the Spaniards, like the French, had got dissatisfied with 
their government, and wanted to swap it." 

The inhabitants of the Spanish colonies were indeed 
tired of their Government. This was so manifestly the 
case in West Florida that even the faint-hearted Clai- 
borne thought there would be no difficulty in acquirmg 
the territory. "A great majority of the people of the 
Baton Rouge settlement," he said, March 3, 1806, to 
Jefferson, "are well affected to the United States, and 
anxious for a change of government."^ The history of 
the subversion of the Spanish rule in Mexico adds most 
effective weight to this testimony. The priests were 
the agfitators and the leaders in the terrible revolt which 
began in September, 18 10, and which was to end with 
Mexican freedom. Had Burr been able to unite the ele- 
ments in opposition to the foreigner in Mexico, then 
indeed might he have been king ; and Wilkinson's taunt 
in a letter to Jefferson concerning Burr's overrunning 
of Mexico — that it would receive a new master in the 
place of promised liberty — would have been full of 
significance. 

The news reported by Mrs. Blennerhassett was of 
sufficient gravity to call her husband away from the 
little group of revolutionists — already diminished by 
the return of the Alston family to South Carolina — 

^Claiborne's Journal, p. T], 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 91 

living in the house of John Jourdan in the town of 
Lexington. Also De Pestre had taken leave of Burr, 
and the rest to bear reports to those v^ho remained in 
the East, and to draw the blindfold tighter around the 
eyes of Yrujo. He was to pretend that the revolution- 
izing of the States was progressing rapidly, and to 
assure the Marquis that the report that Mexico was to 
be invaded had been circulated to hide the main design. 
But before De Pestre had reached his destination the 
Spanish Minister wrote his Government a long dis- 
patch on the subject :^ — 

*'It is indubitable that Colonel Burr and his subordi- 
nates are carrying out their plan. The partial discovery 
of their intentions instead of deterring has only confirmed 
them in the revolution, whose success alone can save 
them. Some of his associates at this place and at New 
York are going to meet him, in spite of the fact that the 
newspapers already comment on his enterprise. It seems 
to me to be his intention to profit by the hostile appear- 
ance on the Sabine to arm his friends preliminary to the 
rupture with Spain. I am confirmed in this opinion by 
a proclamation from the hand of one General Jackson of 
Kentucky, in which he proposed the organization of the 
militia to chastise the insulting Spaniards." 

So ignorant was Yrujo of the real posture of af- 
fairs in the West, he could not conceive that such a 
proclamation truly betokened patriotism ; it was to him 
a mere subterfuge, for he had been accustomed, and the 
conspirators had fostered his predilection, to think 
of the Westerners as openly hostile to the Union. It 
never occurred to Yrujo — the proposition was too 
absurd — that he had been duped in order that an army, 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, November lo, 1806; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 



92 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

marshaled for the conquest of his Sovereign's terri- 
tories, might take things by surprise. 

Burr's force was to consist of five hundred men, 
chiefly from New York, who were to rendezvous at 
Marietta. Then, continued Yrujo : 

"Colonel Burr will go down with them under the pre- 
text of establishing them on a great land purchase he is 
supposed to have made. In passing Cincinnati they 
expect to seize five thousand stand of arms which the Gov- 
ernment deposited there at the time of its difference with 
us about the navigation of the Mississippi. After thus 
dropping the mask, this armed troop will follow down 
the course of the Mississippi. Colonel Burr will remain 
at Natchez till the Assembly of New Orleans has met, 
which will happen at once; and in this meeting (junta) 
they will declare the independence of the Western States, 
and will invite Burr to place himself at the head of their 
Government. He will accept the offer, will descend to 
New Orleans, and will set to work, clothed in a character 
which the people will have given him. I understand that 
Colonel Burr has already written the declaration of inde- 
pendence, and that it is couched in the same terms that 
the States adopted in theirs against Great Britain. This 
circumstance is the more notable inasmuch as the actual 
President was the person who drew it up in 1776. When 
Burr made the project of acting in agreement with Eng- 
land and seizing the Floridas, he expected to master them 
with troops that should accompany him from Baton 
Rouge. Although I am assured that this project is aban- 
doned, and that, on the contrary, he wishes to live on 
good terms with Spain, I have written to Governor Folch 
of West Florida to be on his guard ; and although I am 
persuaded that, by means of Governor Folch's connection 
with General Wilkinson, he must be perfectly informed 
of the state of things and of Burr's intentions, I shall 
write to-day or to-morrow another letter to the Governor 
of Baton Rouge to be on the alert." 

It is puzzling that Yrujo should not have known 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 93 

that Wilkinson's term of pensioner had expired. Had 
he been aware of this fact his anxiety for the safety of 
the southern provinces might justly have increased, 
although he believed the governors in that quarter to 
be well informed of the course of events through the 
press of New Orleans and Natchez. His perplexity 
was indeed augmented through a letter from Burr 
which De Pestre delivered about November 27, 1806, 
preparatory to his report:^ — 

"About eight days ago," said Yrujo to Cevallos, 
December 4th, "a former French officer, one of Burr's par- 
tisans, presented himself here; he is just from Kentucky 
in search of various things needful to the enterprise. . . . 
This officer brought me a letter of recommendation from 
Burr, in which he said simply that the bearer, who had 
recently been in the Western States, could give me in- 
formation about them to satisfy my curiosity. The date 
of this letter was Lexington, October 25th." 

Yrujo was assured that all was going well with 
Burr's affairs, and that by December 5th the adven- 
turers from all parts would concentrate at Marietta. 
The body of the message ran as follows : 

"He also told me, on the part of the Colonel, that I 
should soon hear that it was his intention to attack 
Mexico, but that I was not to believe such rumors ; that 
on the contrary his plans were limited to the emancipa- 
tion of the Western States, and that it was necessary to 
circulate this rumor in order to hide the true design of 
his armaments and of the assemblages of men which 
could no longer be concealed ; that Upper and Lower 
Louisiana, the States of Tennessee and Ohio, stood ready 
and ripe for his plans, but that the State of Kentucky was 

^Yrtijo to Cevallos, December 4, 1806; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 



94 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

much divided ; and as this is the most important in 
numbers and population, an armed force must be pro- 
cured strong enough to overawe the opposition. He 
added, on Burr's part, that as soon as the revolution 
should be complete, he would treat with Spain in regard 
to boundaries, and would conclude this affair to her entire 
satisfaction; meanwhile he wished me to write to the 
Governor of West Florida to diminish the burdens of 
Americans who navigated the Mobile River, and ask him, 
when the explosion should take place, to stop the courier 
or couriers which the friends of Government might dis- 
patch, since it was desirable to delay the report of the 
happenings in the West." 

However successful Burr had been in the earlier 
phase of his intrigue with Yrujo, nothing could have 
been plainer to the Minister than that the conspirators, 
who had now nothing to gain from his cooperation, 
were lulling him into drowsy security. Yrujo would 
have been blind indeed had he not discovered that the 
Westerners were massing, not to overawe Kentucky, 
but to take for themselves certain properties which 
were destined to belong a little longer to Carlos IV. 
Yrujo confessed that Burr in sending him this officer 
had "inspired him with the liveliest apprehensions." 
And he renewed his warnings to the officers in Florida, 
Texas, and Mexico. 

After his interview with Yrujo, De Pestre went to 
New York, where he met that contingent wdiich was to 
have gone round by sea to New Orleans. But every- 
thing was now in confusion because of the President's 
denunciation of the enterprise through his Proclama- 
tion of November 27th.^ Still, hope of ultimate suc- 

"See p. 196. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 95 

cess was not abandoned, and De Pestre returned in a 
fortnight to Philadelphia, and once more called upon 
Yrujo, to whom he related that Swartwout, Dr. Erwin, 
Colonel Smith, and Captain Lewis of the merchant- 
ship Emperor would soon set off for New Orleans. De 
Pestre further stated •} — 

"that the youths enlisted to serve as officers should set 
out as soon as possible for their posts. These, my in- 
formant told me, are different. Some two or three of 
them, the quickest and keenest, go to Washington to 
observe the movements of Government, to keep their 
friends in good disposition, and to dispatch expresses 
with news of any important disposition or occurrence. 
Three go to Norfolk to make some dispatch of provisions. 
A good number of them will go direct to Charleston to 
take command as officers, and see to the embarkation of 
the numerous recruits whom Colonel Burr's son-in-law 
has raised in South Carolina. He himself will then have 
returned there from Kentucky, and will embark with 
them for New Orleans. The rest will embark directly 
for that city from New York." 

This time the Marquis plied De Pestre with such 
questions as. Why, if the separation of the States is the 
object, was it necessary to prepare such quantities of 
provisions? and Why the State of Kentucky had be- 
come obstinate? It appears from Yrujo's account that 
De Pestre was almost driven from his ground. Indeed, 
he was taunted for his dissembling. Blennerhassett 
gave it on the authority of the Frenchman — who re- 
lated the whole of the circumstances to him while at 
Richmond — that Yrujo "pierced the cobweb tissue of 
Burr's intrigues with him at a single glance." 

^Yrujo to Cevallos, December i6, i8o5; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 



96 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

'*He assured De Pestre," the Journal records,' "that 
had Burr opened his designs with frankness, and really- 
projected a severance of the Union, and nothing hostile 
to the Spanish provinces, he. Burr, might have had an 
easy resort to the Spanish treasury and its arsenals. But 
Yrujo laughed at the awkwardness with which Burr 
endeavored to mask his designs on Mexico." 

Such a moment of satisfaction Yrujo could not 
have enjoyed. It was not until De Pestre came on the 
stage that the Marquis realized how thoroughly he had 
been entrapped. He was now convinced that Burr 
planned a descent upon Mexico, and realized that the 
only barrier which stood between the adventurer and 
his goal was Wilkinson. So he wrote with the deepest 
complacency some weeks later that Spain had saved 
herself and the United States by pensioning Wilkinson, 
who had entered into Burr's design for the division of 
the Union, but rebelled at his plan for the conquest of 
Mexico. ^ 

While Yrujo was enjoying this special confidence 
of the associates, the stories of the conspiracy which 
were already rife in the States spread naturally into 
the very provinces the Spanish Minister was most ex- 
ercised about. Some project had been ascribed to Burr 
as early as July, 1805, and since that date the Spanish 
governors had not been lacking information from 
Yrujo, from the press of the States, and from local 
connections. Although Yrujo knew Burr to be at 
the head of the project, with the ostensible design of 

"* Blennerhassett Papers, p. 417. 

2 Yrujo to Cevallos, January 28, 1807; MSS. Spanish 
Archives. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 97 

disrupting the Union, the administrators in the prov- 
inces of Don Carlos thought the movement directed by 
the Government of the United States, whose object was 
solely the extension of boundaries. Grand Pre, sta- 
tioned at Baton Rouge, had become alarmed, and wrote 
Claiborne as early as April i, 1806, that he understood 
hostile preparations against his province were making 
in Mississippi. Claiborne replied, "Your Excellency's 
letter of the first instant, has been received, and to quiet 
your apprehensions as far as is in my power, I hasten to 
assure you that I have never before heard of the hostile 
preparations which you seem to think are on foot in the 
Mississippi Territory."^ But Claiborne had forgotten 
that he had said in a dispatch to Washington that West 
Florida was ready to revolt, and that hostile arma- 
ments were organizing. Kemper — one of the filibust- 
ering brothers of that name in Mississippi — bore wit- 
ness to that when he said that Burr's corps, which were 
forming in that Territory, meant to attack Baton 
Rouge; and Wilkinson likewise testified to the open 
hostility of the Territory under Meade, the latter hav- 
ing expressed the wish that the Spanish cavalry would 
intercept the General on his ride to the frontier in Sep- 
tember, "because if this did not happen we should have 
no war. The same man," said W^ilkinson, "before I 
reached Natchez actually talked of attacking Baton 
Rouge." ^ Early in the fall Vicente Folch, Governor 
of West Florida, was advised of the scheme and of 
the violent disposition of his neighbors ; and imme- 

^Claiborne to Grand Pre, April 8, 1806; Journal, p. iii. 
^Wilkinson to John Smith, Jefferson MSS. 



98 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

diately hurried information to Mexico. Again, on 
October ist, he sent a message to the Viceroy :' — 

''You have already been informed of the project to 
revolutionize Mexico. This enterprise has not been lost 
sight of, and seems to be stronger than ever. According 
to the plan, if the weather permits, in February or March 
ten thousand Kentuckians, three thousand regular troops, 
eight or ten thousand militia from Louisiana, who will 
be forced to go, will march for Mexico. They will raise 
a corps of five thousand blacks, who will be taken from 
the plantations and declared free. This will make an 
army of from twenty-eight to thirty thousand men ; five 
thousand will be reserved for the city of New Orleans. 
Baton Rouge and Pensacola will probably be the first 
taken. . . . After that, Natchitoches will be the point 
for the reunion. Part of the army will be embarked to 
land at the Rio Grande. The pretext for this expedition 
is afforded by the presence of the Spanish troops at 
Adayes. Congress will act only on the defensive, but if 
once these troops are united they will march toward 
Mexico with great proclamations." 

Without doubt Folch had grains of truth with his 
chaff; but here again Burr's project was swallowed up 
in the larger purpose attributed to the nation. That 
the movement was directed wholly against Spain was 
indubitable. There was not a hint nor even a suspicion 
that the West, according to Yrujo's advices, was first 
to be revolutionized. To those viewing the situation 
at short range his disclosures appeared but idle proph- 
ecy; of national aggressiveness, on the other hand, 
there w^ere unmistakable signs, and its direction was 
undoubted. 

* Folch to Iturrigaray, October i, 1806; MSS. Mexican 
Archives. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 99 

Amid all these eddying reports and rumors, the 
Government at Washington, harassed by Pitt, teased 
by Napoleon, and defied by Godoy, labored heedless of 
the gathering storm on a near horizon. It was toward 
the end of October before the Administration thought 
the matter of the conspiracy worth its attention. Vari- 
ous letters and the notice of the organization of the 
Wood County militia had been received, but there was 
nothing tangible in any of the communications. Octo- 
ber 13th one James Taylor wrote to Madison from 
Kentucky that the scheme in question was to seize the 
Congress lands and to separate the States; that Blen- 
nerhassett, who had fled to this country, was reported 
to have written the articles signed "Querist" ;^ that 
Woodbridge & Company of Marietta were building ten 
gunboats, or strong vessels resembling them, at a navy 
yard seven miles up the Muskingum.' Long before 
this, however, Jefferson had been warned that a con- 
spiracy was on foot in the West and that Burr was its 
master-spirit. As early as January 10, 1806, Joseph 
H. Daviess, prosecuting-attorney for the Federal Dis- 
trict of Kentucky, wrote the President a private letter 
denouncing the Spanish pensioners, and declaring that 
Burr's object was to effect "a separation of the Union 
in favor of Spain." 

'This plot is laid wider than you imagine," he asserted 
by way of a general warning. ''Mention the subject to no 
one from the Western country, however high in office he 
may be. Some of them are deeply tainted with this 
treason. I hate duplicity of expression; but on this 

^See p. 81. 

^'TayFor to Madison, October 13, 1806; Madison MSS. 



loo THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

subject I am not authorized to be explicit, nor is it neces- 
sary. You will dispatch some fit person into the Orleans 
country to inquire." ' 

Daviess knew nothing "explicit," nor was he in 
better position eleven months later when he swore out 
a process against Burr. Notwithstanding, from the 
date of his first note until Burr was afloat upon the 
Mississippi, he kept up a constant stream of denuncia- 
tions. In a second letter, one month from the first, he 
recited the itinerary of Burr during his trip through 
the West in 1805 ; named the men with whom he asso- 
ciated, dwelling particularly on his connection with 
Wilkinson and the Senator from Ohio. On March 5th 
he declared that he would raise money and pursue the 
plot at his own expense. "* The President had already 
written him asking for more information.^ In pursuit 
of this. May 7th found the district-attorney at St. 
Louis, where he remained several days scrutinizing 
Wilkinson's conduct with a view to fathoming the con- 
spiracy. * Once the General took up a map and, tapping 
the region about New Mexico, said, "Had Burr been 
President we should have had all this country before 
now." To Madison Daviess confided at this stage that 
a war with Spain was the first step in the programme, 
and that this was considered inevitable. "The Mexican 
provinces, the American possessions on the Mississippi, 
and the Floridas are in view." Later he saw four 

^View of the President's Conduct (p. 10), by J. H. Daviess, 
1807. 

^View of the President's Conduct, p. 13. 
' Viezv, etc., p. 14. Clark's Proofs, p. 179. 
* Smith's History of Kentucky, p. 427. 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS loi 

sides to the plot : one for the Spanish Minister, in New 
Orleans and the Western States; one for adventurers, 
in the conquest of Mexico; another for the multitude, 
in the Washita lands ; and lastly one for Burr himself, 
aggrandizement.' But the Government was not driven 
by Daviess's wholesale charges to an investigation of 
the plot ; nor were his communications even mentioned 
among the sources of information in the Cabinet Mem- 
oranda of October 226., which Jefferson recorded in his 
own hand.' — 

"During the last session of Congress, Colonel Burr 
who was here, finding no hope of being employed in any 
department of the government, opened himself confiden- 
tially to some persons on whom he thought he could rely, 
on a scheme of separating the Western from the Atlantic 
States, and erecting the former into an independent con- 
federacy. He had before made a tour of those States, 
which had excited suspicions, as every motion does of 
such a Catalinarian character. Of his having made this 
proposition here we have information from General 
Eaton through Mr. Ely and Mr. Granger. He went off 
this spring to the western country. Of his movements 
on his way, information has come to the Secretary of 
State and myself from John Nicholson and Mr. Williams 
of the state of New York, respecting a Mr. Tyler; 
Colonel Morgan, Neville, and Roberts, near Pittsburg; 
and to other citizens through other channels and the 
newspapers. We are of opinion unanimously that con- 
fidential letters be written to the Governors of Ohio, 
Indiana, Mississippi, and New Orleans; to the district- 
attorneys of Kentucky, of Tennessee, of Louisiana, to 
have him strictly watched, and on his committing any 
overt act, to have him arrested and tried for treason, mis- 
demeanor, or whatever other offence the act may amount 

' Viezv, etc., p. 21. 

^Memoranda, October 22, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 



102 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

to ; and in like manner to arrest and try any of his follow- 
ers committing acts against the laws. We think it proper 
also to order some of the gunboats up to Fort Adams to 
stop by force any passage of suspicious persons going 
down in force. General Wilkinson being expressly de- 
clared by Burr to Eaton to be engaged with him in this 
design as his lieutenant, or first in command, and suspi- 
cion of infidelity in Wilkinson being now become very 
general, a question is proposed what is proper to be done 
as to him on this account, as well as for his disobedience 
of orders received by him June 1 1 at St. Louis to descend 
with all practical despatch to New Orleans to mark out 
the site of certain defensive works there, and then repair 
to take command at Natchitoches, on which business he 
did not leave St. Louis till September. Consideration 
adjourned. 

"October 24. It is agreed unanimously to call for 
Captains Preble and Decatur to repair to New Orleans, 
by land or by sea as they please, there to take command 
of the force on the water, and that the Argus and two 
gunboats from New York, three from Norfolk, and two 
from Charleston shall be ordered there, if on consulta- 
tion between Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Smith the appropria- 
tions shall be found to enable us ; that Preble shall, on 
consultation with Governor Claiborne, have great discre- 
tionary powers ; that Graham shall be sent through Ken- 
tucky on Burr's trail, with discretionary powers to con- 
sult confidentially with the governors to arrest Burr if he 
has made himself liable. He is to have a commission of 
[Upper] Louisiana, and Dr. Browne is to be removed. 
Letters are to be written by post to Governor Claiborne, 
the Governor of Mississippi, and Colonel Freeman to be 
on their guard against any surprises of our posts or ves- 
sels by him. The question as to General Wilkinson post- 
poned till Preble's departure, for future information. 

"October 25. A mail arrived yesterday from the 
westward, and not one word is heard from that quarter 
of any movements of Colonel Burr. This total silence 
of the officers of the government, of the members of 
Congress, of the newspapers, proves he is committing no 



PLANS AND PREPARATIONS 103 

overt act against the law. We therefore rescind 
the determination to send Preble, Decatur, the Argus, or 
the gunboats, and instead of them to send off the marines 
which are here to reinforce, or take place of, the gar- 
rison at New Orleans, with a view to Spanish operations ; 
and instead of writing to the governors, etc., we send 
Graham on that route, with confidential authority to 
inquire into Burr's movements, put the Governors, etc., 
on their guard, to provide for his arrest if necessary, 
and to take on himself the government of [Upper] 
Louisiana. Letters are still to be written to Claiborne, 
Freeman, and the Governor of Mississippi to be on their 
guard." 

The resolutions of the first two days indicate that 
the Cabinet saw possible danger in Burr's project; but 
the action of the third proves that they were loath, with 
their meagre information, to take any decisive steps. 
The fact that Wilkinson's derelictions were quietly 
passed over is only another illustration of the painful 
indecision which ruled at this time both President and 
advisers in every matter of importance. Burr's plot 
was subordinated to the threatening foreign complica- 
tions; therefore one need express no astonishment at 
the rescinding of all vigorous measures against a con- 
spiracy which, as yet, had taken no definite form, and 
which had been denounced only in the vaguest terms. 
It seemed quite sufficient to send John Graham, Secre- 
tary of the Orleans Territory, on Burr's path to inquire 
into his behavior, and to write letters of warning to 
the officials of the West. 

But if the officials of the Western States, familiar 
with Burr's movements, were expecting a warning of 
any character it was to prepare to defend themselves 



I04 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

against the Castilians in force on their borders. Jack- 
son had just issued his proclamation to the Tennessee 
miHtia, and Burr went from place to place applauded 
as the leader destined to scourge a foe whose insolence 
and aggressions had at last outworn the patience of a 
long-suffering people. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Crisis on the Frontier 

WHEN James Monroe, Minister Plenipoten- 
tiary to England and Envoy Extraordinary 
to Spain, quitted Madrid for London, May 
26, 1805, war with Spain appeared inevitable. The at- 
tempt to reach a settlement of the disputes between the 
two countries had utterly failed. With the United 
States now threatening to fall upon that part of the 
Empire which might otherwise escape the greed of the 
Dictator of Europe and the English merchants, the 
circle of Spain's enemies was complete; it was a situa- 
tion from which there was no escape, and Manuel de 
Godoy, the Prince of Peace, looked resignedly ahead to 
wars and embroilments in the Hope of finding relief. 

The very day on which Monroe had his audience of 
leave with Carlos IV., May 22, 1805, Don Pedro 
Cevallos, Minister of State, discussed with Soler, Min- 
ister of Hacienda, the course the negotiations had 
taken. After canvassing each point which had been 
raised in the conferences with Monroe — admitting the 
justness of only one claim of the United States — the 
very important dispatch closed with this paragraph: 
'T send you this notice so that you may take what 
measures the service of the King and the security of 
his dominions demand, it being impossible to forecast 
the consequences which may follow the rupture of 

105 



io6 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY, 

negotiations."^ The matter was more pointedly put 
by Francisco Gil to the Viceroy of Mexico, Jose de 
Iturrigaray :" — 

"The political situation with regard to the United 
States of America is darkly uncertain, because the nego- 
tiations which were undertaken with Mr. Monroe have 
been broken off on account of the fact that the claims 
he advanced were as ambitious and exorbitant as they 
were prejudicial to the rights of the Crown. The defenses 
of our possessions will, therefore, be looked to with the 
utmost care." 

A plan for the protection of Texas was speedily de- 
vised, and early in October, 1805, the posts of Bayou 
Pierre and Nana, to the east of the Sabine — recon- 
noitring stations mustering respectively forces of 
twenty and ten men — were occupied.^ Behind these 
were Nacogdoches, Orcoquisac, and Trinidad, where 
the real struggle for the defense of the province would 
be made, while further in the interior were La Bahia, 
San Marcos, Refugio, and San Antonio de Bexar.* 
While these preparations show that a struggle was ex- 
pected, half invited, the Americans were taking steps 
which promised no disappointment. 

January 24, 1806, Major Porter, commanding Fort 
Claiborne at Natchitoches, received an order from the 
War Department which required that the officer in 
command at Nacogdoches should give assurance that 
no further inroads would be made to the east of the 

^Real Cedulas, vol. cxcv, ; MSS. Mexican Archives. 

^Real Cedulas, vol. cxcv.; MSS. Mexican Archives. 

^Gonzales to Rodriguez, October 16, 1805 ; MSS. Bexar 
Archives. 

*Salcedo to Cordero, October 8 and 25 (two letters), 1805; 
MSS. Bexar Archives. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 107 

Sabine, to which stream the Americans were to extend 
their patrols. Lieutenant Piatt with these instructions 
was sent to Nacogdoches. Rodriguez, the commander, 
replied that no aggression had been intended, but that 
he could not give the assurance demanded.^ Piatt re- 
turned with this answer, and on the first of February 
Captain Turner with his command, which numbered 
sixty, was ordered to proceed to the neighborhood of 
Adayes, where he would fall in with a "stationary party 
of armed Spaniards" which was to be commanded to 
withdraw beyond the Sabine. They might go in peace 
if they would, but evacuate they must, even at the cost 
of blood. So ran the orders.^ 

On the fifth Turner arrived before the camp at 
Bayou Pierre near Adayes, where a mission had stood 
in the past century. Gonzales, the commanding officer, 
protested at the unwarranted invasion of his Sover- 
eign's territory, but signed a written agreement to the 
effect that the troops of his Catholic Majesty which he 
commanded would be transported to the other side of 
the Sabine as soon as the horses were in condition to 
travel ; or at furthest in six days.^ 

Now indeed the fear of invasion seized both sides. 
The Americans trembled for Louisiana; the air was 
rife wnth tales of Spanish intrigues, and there were 
evidences of deceit and treachery. Major Porter had 
but two hundred effective men to meet whatever emer- 
gency arose, while the enemy were said to number four 

^Martin's Louisiana, ii., 63. 

'Messages and Reports of the United States Government, 
1806. Gayarre's History of Louisiana, iv., 137. 

'^Messages and Reports of the United States Government, 
1806. 



io8 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

hundred, exclusive of Indians/ In reality the Span- 
iards were only fifty-one. But the permanent abandon- 
ment of the region in dispute was far from the purpose 
of Salcedo, Captain-General of the Internal Provinces 
of Mexico, who at once ordered to the front six hun- 
dred militia under Lieutenant-Colonel Herrera.^ A 
little later he declared that the United States by sending 
troops across the Arroyo Hondo had been guilty of 
breaking the harmony existing between the two powers. 

"Ever since France sold Louisiana to the United 
States," he went on petulantly to Cordero,"* ''nothing has 
been left undone to extend the limits into the Spanish 
possessions of the Missouri {Misuri) and Arkansas 
(Napertle), and to secure the twenty-two leagues of 
land lying between the Arroyo Hondo and the Sabine, 
the former of which marks the boundary of Louisiana, 
as the Americans well know. They are also massing 
troops without question of expense to hold by force their 
spoils. They are also intriguing with the Indians, have 
built a storehouse at Natchitoches and have filled it with 
gifts for them. It has not been possible for us to oppose 
them in force, but in order to counteract their influence 
among the Indians I have dispatched expeditions to the 
various tribes, our dependencies — some to the far North- 
west." 

In addition to the threatening situation in Texas, 
rumors of a graver nature reached the Captain-General 
of the Internal Provinces at Chihuahua. They were 
nothing less than premonitory warnings of the coming 
of Burr; and it is indeed astonishing to discover that 
thus early the officials of Mexico had received ac- 

^Gayarre, iv., 137. 

^Salcedo to Cordero, April 9, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 

'Salcedo to Cordero, April 15, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 109 

counts of the nature of his plot. Burr's designs were 
complicated with the attitude assumed by the United 
States Government in the matter of the extension of 
boundaries, and the complication confounded contem- 
poraries, most of all the Spaniards. They saw the con- 
spiracy only as an aggressive movement against their 
territories, organized as it were under the wing of the 
Government and with the plea of vindication of rights. 
But the Spaniards also thought they had rights, and 
prepared to defend them. April 21st Governor Cordero 
commanded that the various chiefs of Indian tribes 
of Texas should be notified of the menace of the United 
States, so that they might be vigilant.^ By this, too, 
the Viceroy, who was at first inclined to ignore the 
movement, began to look seriously upon the crisis, and 
sent forward all the available troops.^ 

Meanwhile the Spanish soldiers who had lingered 
in New Orleans months beyond their allotted time — for 
no other purpose, some thought, than to create disaffec- 
tion, or to be on the ground to seize the city by a coup 
de main — were ordered away. Among those who left 
sullen and defeated was the dictatorial intendant, Juan 
Ventura Morales, famous as the author of the closure 
of the entrepot at New Orleans. February 15th, three 
days after Morales had departed. Marquis Casa Calvo, 
also under compulsion and bitterly protesting, set out 
for Pensacola. He had just returned to New Orleans 
from a four months' trip to Texas, where, to credit 
Rodriguez, he had advocated the precipitation of hos- 

^Cordero to Viana, April 21, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
^Iturrigaray to Salcedo, April 28, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 



no THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

tilities in the belief that Louisiana would espouse the 
cause of Spain/ Cordero and Salcedo thought him 
busy with carrying into effect his commission as terri- 
torial adjudicator, while Claiborne heard that he was 
tampering with the allegiance of the Indians ; that he 
was spreading discontent, or indeed, that he had gone 
to command the Mexican army.^ The nervous Gov- 
ernor of Louisiana rejoiced therefore at the President's 
determination to hasten the withdrawal of the Span- 
iards. Their expulsion, however, stirred up their 
brethren in West Florida. Governor Folch refused 
to permit the transmission of the United States mails 
through his territory, the fortifications of Mobile were 
strengthened, and emissaries were sent among the 
Choctaws. Claiborne became uneasy, and wrote the 
President that a respectable force was essential to the 
safety of New Orleans. As the summer wore on 
affairs calmed somewhat on the frontier, but there 
were too many provocations for the thought of peace. 
Spain had cast the die and was as determined to 
do nothing — her European position had materially 
changed for the worse — as when Monroe demanded 
his passports of Carlos IV. in May, 1805. 

"On the fourth of July [1806]," says Parton, 
"there were not a thousand persons in the United 
States who did not think war with Spain inevitable, 
impending, begun !" War with Spain was to be waged 
not only that our rights might be vindicated, but also 
that the Mexicans might be free. It was in the West 

^Rodriguez to Cordero, March 4, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
'Casa Calvo to Cordero, December 8, 1805; Salcedo to Cor- 
dero, January i and 28 (two letters), 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER iii 

that this feehng reached its cHmax, and the sentiments 
pervading the celebrations of the Fourth of July may 
well be taken as indicative of their attitude. To know 
their attitude toward the Union, a war with Spain, the 
invasion of Mexico is to hold the key to the conspiracy. 
From the nature of things, a conspiracy with form and 
life must reflect the character of its adherents. Was 
there then in the West an element unfriendly to the 
Union ? Was there one animated by revolutionary im- 
pulses which longed to expel the arrogant foreigner 
from the shores of America? The Westerners made 
reply in unequivocal language. 

At a banquet in Cincinnati the following appro- 
priate toast was drunk : "May party spirit be banished 
from this land, and freedom and a union of sentiment 
predominate; a determination to support our liberty 
and Constitution inviolate." ^ Among other toasts 
offered at Georgetown, Kentucky, were: "The people 
of the United States: may their union be lasting as 
time"; and, "Western America: one in principle and 
interest with the rest of the Union." ^ In a neighbor- 
ing city: "The Mississippi and its waters — our high- 
way to market : may its trade be free and uninterrupted 
as its current." Then drinking to Louisiana, our recent 
acquisition : "May the tree of liberty flourish on the 
ruins of despotism"; and, "May the Western country 
flourish, and the golden chain of the Union never 
break."^ At Lexington they praised "The patriots who 
suffered in '76" ; and, "Thomas Jefferson, President of 

^Western Spy, July 8, 1806. 
'Palladium, July 27, 1806. 
'^Palladium, July 10, 1806. 



112 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

the United States." In St. Louis we find similar expres- 
sions of faith and confidence in the Constitution and 
the RepubHc. At a celebration given October 25th in 
honor of Lewis and Clark, the returning explorers of 
the far Northwest, these toasts were proposed: "The 
Territory of Louisiana — freedom without bloodshed : 
may her actions duly appreciate the blessing." Then, 
with three cheers: ''The Federal Constitution: may 
the eagle of America convey it to the remotest parts 
of the globe ; and whilst they read they can but admire." 
A third : *'The memory of the illustrious Washington, 
father of America : may his guardian spirit still watch 
over us and prove a terror to the engines of tyranny." 
In New Orleans they toasted the following sentiment : 
"The ancient boundaries of Louisiana — republics never 
contract their limits." Claiborne was delighted with 
the celebration in his capital. 

"On yesterday," he said to Dearborn in a dispatch of 
July 5, 1806, ''the citizens of this place exhibited a degree 
of patriotism which afforded me pleasure. All the stores 
in the city were closed by order of the city council, and 
the inhabitants generally suspended their usual avoca- 
tions. High mass was performed in the forenoon at 
the churches, and a Te Deum sung. At night a new 
tragedy called Washington; or, the Liberty of the New 
World, was performed and much applauded by the 
numerous audience, consisting for the most part of 
ancient Louisianians." ^ 

Even the Creoles were enthusiastic and applauded 
the idea of liberty for the New World ; and liberty for 
the New World, as they knew, could come only by the 

^Claiborne to Dearborn, July 5, 1806; Journal, p. 201. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 113 

destruction of the power which had fettered it. Also 
the Mexican Association, or, more accurately, the 
Mexican Society, of New Orleans was enthusiastic 
in the agitation for war. "It had for its object," said 
Dr. Watkins, Mayor of New Orleans, "collecting in- 
formation relative to the population and force of the 
interior provinces of New Spain which, in the event 
of war, might be useful to the United States." He 
further averred that the invasion of Mexico had always 
been counted upon in a war with the Dons. 

The West, as it loved the Union hated Spain, and 
that hatred appeared to be of a nature which only war 
could appease. The war might be legitimate or other- 
wise — there were those who did not mean to ask ques- 
tions. Perhaps this element and its most extravagant 
plan is represented in the communication published in 
several Western newspapers in the fall of 1805, over 
the signature of "A Kentucky Man" : 

"As to the Spaniards, we can pay ourselves. There 
are gentlemen now in this city from the westward, who 
will make contracts whenever Congress authorizes it to 
pay every just claim of our citizens upon them, and will 
engage to do it, free of any expense to the United States, 
and also, not to injure any private property in Mexico."* 

Evidently nothing less was meditated than the 
overrunning of Mexico, whose public domains or con- 
fiscated public properties would be seized for debts 
long overdue! The proposition was not so visionary 
as it appeared on its face, and cannot be overlooked 

^Orleans Gazette, November i, 1805. 



114 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

in casting up the sum total of ideas which were eddy- 
ing in the West. 

In the midst of the war excitement, in the winter 
of 1805, Francisco de Miranda, a native of Caracas, 
landed in New York. As early as 1793 he had tried 
to draw the United States and Great Britain into a 
war for the liberation of his native country. Failing 
then, he went to the Continent, where he became a 
distinguished wanderer, taking high rank in the armies 
of both France and Russia. It was truly an auspicious 
time for him to revive his scheme of rebellion in Vene- 
zuela, for war between Spain and the United States 
appeared to be only a matter of days. Finding gener- 
ous friends in New York, he soon had the Leander 
fitted out with arms and provisions, and February 2, 
1806, sailed on his ill-fated voyage. 

The part played by the Government in this affair 
is, to say the least, not above suspicion, for both Jeffer- 
son and Madison knew something of what was going 
on ; but for us what is of most value in this connection 
is to know that the expedition was watched with the 
greatest interest throughout the Union, especially in 
the West. The newspapers of the time were full of 
Miranda, and the tone of the comment was most con- 
vincing. A single paragraph from the Charleston 
Courier, quoted in the Orleans Gazette , will suffice •} — 

"The expedition under General Miranda, from a va- 
riety of circumstances, promises to be attended with suc- 
cess. The dissatisfaction of the people generally with the 
Spanish Government, and particularly the priests, who, 

^Orleans Gazette, July 4, 1806. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 115 

by a late decree of the court of Madrid, are deprived of 
the principal parts of the revenues of the church, will 
induce them to seek a change of masters; to rid them- 
selves at once of the most abject state of slavery and ig- 
norance and from the fiend-like influence of the Prince 
of Peace. . . . What has the Spanish Government to 
oppose him [Miranda] ? Nothing. The provinces are 
without troops, or at least they are not sufficient to drive 
the revolters from their purposes. The mother country 
cannot assist them — she has soldiers but no ships — and 
if the means of transportation were found, the British 
fleet would intercept them. . . . The success of Mi- 
randa will open to the Americans a new field of enter- 
prise ; from the United States they must receive their sup- 
plies of goods and military stores, and the products which 
can be obtained in return will yield a good profit. . . . 
But, we hope, remembering our own emancipation, we 
shall give our aid to those who feel their rights, and 
have courage enough to assert them. . . . May the 
most brilliant success attend the standards of those who 
fight for the cause of rational liberty, and for the dignity 
of the human species." 

Such paragraphs need no discussion, but the fact 
that they were printed and reprinted in every journal 
of the West is worth remarking. Having been thus 
informed of Miranda's enterprise, the Westerners were 
on the alert for any news from Venezuela. All through 
the summer and fall that Burr and his associates were 
struggling to make headway with their expedition the 
newspapers were telling of Miranda's victories, and 
finally of the rumors of his defeat. When the report 
came that he had been beaten off, the West was loath 
to give credence to it, and the disappointment was keen 
when it came positively to be known that he had failed. 
There was not in all the West a word of disaffection. 



ii6 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

In their toasts — and toasts were of far greater signifi- 
cance in that day than this — two ideas appear predomi- 
nant : reverence for the Union and hatred for the 
symbols of despotism. Their sympathies, too, for 
Miranda betrayed unconsciously a love for the Con- 
stitution and a growing National spirit which was in 
six short years to force, in spite of the East and New 
England, the second war with Great Britain! And 
yet this was the region advertised as openly rebellious 
— the region Yrujo and Merry expected shortly to 
declare its independence. Could ignorance of condi- 
tions have been more dense? 

By the end of June, 1806, there were in the province 
of Texas one thousand and seven soldiers.^ The force 
on the frontier, however, never exceeded six hundred 
and ninety-seven men,^ which was considered strong 
enough to sustain the King's pretensions in that quar- 
ter. Accordingly, in July, a body of troops under 
Viana once more hoisted the flag of Spain at Bayou 
Pierre. August 4th Viana wrote urgently to the com- 
mander of Nacogdoches for provisions, complaining 
that they had been four days without rations.^ The 
straits of the quartermaster were much intensified 
by the arrival of Herrera with several companies of 
cavalry; while sickness spread through the camp, con- 
verting it into a wretched hospital. But the Ameri- 
cans held exaggerated ideas of the efficiency of the 
corps under Cordero and Herrera. 

^Cordero to Salcedo, June 12, 1806; MSS. State of Texas 
Archives. 

^Herrera to Salcedo, November 8, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 
^Viana to Rodriguez, August 4, 1806; MSS. Bexar Archives. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 117 

The news of the recrossing of the Sabine by the 
Spaniards spread rapidly through the country, rousing 
the inhabitants to arms — for the hated enemy appeared 
once more as invaders. The Governor of Louisiana 
was at Concordia, near Natchez — having been granted 
a leave of absence to visit his home in Tennessee — when 
the intelHgence reached him. August 17th he met 
Cowles Meade, the Acting-Governor of Mississippi 
Territory, at Natchez, and a joint proclamation was 
issued. The people were called upon to aid the regular 
troops in expelling the Spaniards from Bayou Pierre, 
if the orders of the War Department had not been 
revoked; they were to be put on a campaign footing, 
the militia of the Mississippi Territory being ready to 
march to the frontier or to defend New Orleans, as the 
circumstances might require. The continued absence 
of Wilkinson was remarked and regretted.^ But Clai- 
borne felt he had no time to lose. "Having heard that 
a considerable force of Spaniards [is] in the vicinity of 
Natchitoches," he wrote the same day to Dr. John 
Watkins,^ *'I propose setting out to-morrow for the 
counties of Rapides and Natchitoches, for the purpose 
of putting the militia in the best possible state." 

Before Claiborne had started, a Pinckneyville cor- 
respondent of the Orleans Gazette reported that Lieu- 
tenant Smith had arrived from Natchitoches with 
orders for Colonel Kingsbury to march forward with 
all the troops at Fort Adams. Nine hundred men 
under the Governor of Texas, so the report ran, had 

^Journal, p. 230. Claiborne's Correspondence, Orleans Terri- 
tory, vol. iv., MSS. State Department Archives. 
''Journal, p. 228. 



ii8 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

advanced to within twelve miles of Natchitoches, where 
they were met by a flag from Major Porter, demanding 
an explanation of this new encroachment; to which 
they answered that they meant to reoccupy their for- 
mer positions. An engagement had therefore probably 
taken place, if the Spaniards persisted in their under- 
taking/ The reporter was not aware, however, that 
the commander at Natchitoches was bound by supple- 
mentary instructions from the head of the army, which 
forbade the enforcement of the orders from the Secre- 
tary of War. Wilkinson was already disposing of 
things to suit himself. 

Claiborne entered at once into a sharp controversy 
with Herrera. On the twenty-sixth he complained of 
several acts of unfriendliness — the setting at liberty of 
runaway slaves, the capture of three Americans (Irwin, 
Shaw, and Brewster), and the invasion of the territory 
of the United States. Herrera did not deny the first 
two charges, but returned his demurrer to the third. 
At this juncture he fell ill, and Claiborne courteously 
sent Dr. Hayward to attend him. The Governor, how- 
ever, did not mean to suspend operations — he urged 
the fulfillment of the instructions from Washington, 
which commanded that all foreign troops should be 
driven to the west of the Sabine. Colonel Cushing 
explained that this would be contrary to the mandate 
of Wilkinson; and thereupon the Governor gave vent 
to his suspicions in a letter to Meade: "My present 
impression is that 'all is not right.' I know not whom 
to censure, but it seems to me that there is wrong 

^Orleans Gazette, August 22, 1806. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 119 

somewhere. Either the orders to Major Porter (which 
have been pubhshed) ought not to have been issued, 
or they should have been adhered to and supported." ^ 
It was, indeed, hard for a layman to understand how 
even a general could set in abeyance the commands 
of his superior ; there zvas wrong somewhere, but this 
was as near as the good-natured, honest Governor ever 
came to its discovery. The day he wrote Meade he 
addressed two letters quite free from suspicions to the 
War Department: 

'The Spanish troops have made a retrograde move- 
ment," he reported August 28th ;'^ "they have advanced 
their main body to within seventeen miles of Natchi- 
toches, and their patrols as far as the Bayou Funda [Ar- 
royo Hondo], to which place it is contended the province 
of Texas extends (this bayou is about seven miles from 
Natchitoches) ; but within these few days past they have 
fallen back to the settlement of Bayou Pierre, about fifty 
or sixty miles distant from Natchitoches. Their num- 
bers are conjectured to be 1,000, the greater part cavalry, 
and reinforcements are daily expected. They are amply 
supplied with beef cattle, but it is said a scarcity of bread 
is experienced. ... I have found the Americans, who 
are settled in the frontier counties, devoted to their 
country, and solicitous to be called into service." 

The second letter, a week later, recounted as current 
report that the Spaniards at Bayou Pierre numbered 
1200; that the Governor of Texas was approaching 
with three hundred regulars ; that two regiments from 
Vera Cruz were to land at the mouth of the Trinity; 
and that the Viceroy and the Council of Mexico were 
alone responsible for the military movements, the Court 

^Claiborne to Meade, September 9, 1806; Journal, p. 269. 
journal, p. 243. 



I20 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

of Spain having no part in it. It was mentioned that 
Colonel Cushing was restrained from acting on the 
offensive by Wilkinson's commands; that the Colonel 
in the meantime was making arrangements to take the 
field, while he (Claiborne) was preparing the militia/ 
After his experiences in the administration of the 
municipality of New Orleans, where he found only 
antagonisms and imbittered factions, political and 
social, it gave him extreme pleasure, as he wrote Cush- 
ing, to note the enthusiasm of the people.^ The una- 
nimity with which they responded to the defense of the 
country was certainly gratifying to him and to those 
in the high places of the Government, who were in daily 
expectation of the herald of war. 

The Cabinet early resigned itself to the situation. 
When the news of the expulsion of Gonzales reached 
Washington a meeting was held, the result of which 
the President reported to Dearborn, who was absent : — 

"Six war vessels are to be kept before New Orleans," 
ran the note ; "three in Lake Pontchartrain. Blockhouses 
and other defenses are to be erected at suitable places on 
the defiles of New Orleans. The troops are to remain 
off the island on account of their health, but they are to 
be ready to march at notice. The militia of New Orleans, 
Tombigbee, and Natchez are to be put in the best pos- 
sible condition ; those at New Orleans to defend that 
city; those on the Tombigbee to seize Mobile or Pensa- 
cola, or follow if the Spanish troops from either of these 
threaten New Orleans. These orders are to be carried 
out with as little noise as possible.'" 

While these were wholly defensive measures, the 

^Journal, p. 254. 
^Journal, p. 272. 
^Jefferson to Dearborn, April 26, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 121 

state of mind of the Government is clearly reflected 
therein. If anything was left in doubt, this was shortly 
removed by the Executive. May 6, 1806, when the fol- 
lowing orders went forward to General Wilkinson, the 
challenge was accepted, and it was for the administra- 
tors of Don Carlos in the New World to say whether 
the Floridas, Louisiana, Texas, and the Spanish 
Americas should become legitimate stakes of war. 

"From recent information received from New Orleans 
and its vicinity," wrote the Secretary of War to General 
Wilkinson/ ''the hostile views of the officers of his Cath- 
olic Majesty in that quarter have been so evident as to 
require the strictest precaution on the part of the United 
States ; and the immediate exertion of the means we pos- 
sess for securing the rightful possession of the territory 
of the United States, and for protecting the citizens and 
their property from the hostile encroachments of our 
neighbours, the Spaniards. You will, therefore, with as 
little delay as practicable, repair to the Territory of Or- 
1 ans or its vicinity, and take upon yourself the command 
of the troops in that quarter, together with such militia or 
volunteers as may turn out for the defense of the country. 
And you will, by all the means in your power, repel any 
invasion of the territory of the United States east of the 
River Sabine, or north or west of the bounds of what 
has been called West Florida." 

There could be no mistaking the meaning of these 
orders; they were explicit and final. Though it was 
true "every day increased our prospects of war," as the 
General wrote, he was detained in St. Louis for three 
months by "various and unavoidable obstacles." What 
these distressing impediments were we are left to sur- 
mise. Certain it is the petty political intrigue between 

^Wilkinson's Memoirs, ii., Ap. xc. 



122 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

himself on the one side and Major Bruff and Colonel 
Hammond on the other offers no explanation.^ He 
wrote John Smith very soon after the receipt of the 
dispatch of May 6th: "I shall obey the military man- 
date, for there I look for fame and honor."'' He was 
therefore apparently eager to proceed. Why the delay ? 
Is it not possible that Clark gave us the key when he 
said that the General wrote Burr, "I shall be ready 
before you" ? His procrastination was deliberate, and 
could have been for no other purpose than to await the 
development of the conspiracy. 

Wilkinson landed in Natchez the night of Sep- 
tember 7th, and the next day outlined his programme 
to Dearborn : **I shall drain the cup of conciliation to 
maintain the peace of our country," he vaunted ; but in 
the preceding paragraph he had remarked that he hoped 
the Spaniards would remain at Bayou Pierre until he 
arrived, and he had taken occasion to say that both 
Meade and Claiborne favored expelling the enemy alto- 
gether, not leaving them so much as a guard at Bayou 
Pierre. 

'^Governor Claiborne has, I understand, arrayed the 
militia in the western counties of the Territory of 
Orleans," he continued,^ "but I shall discourage their 
march until I have penetrated the designs of the Span- 
iard, and may find him deaf to the solemn appeal which 
I shall make to his understanding, his interest, and his 
duty. . . . Should I be forced to appeal to arms, to 
drive them effectually beyond the Sabine or cut them 

^Wilkinson to Dearborn, June 17, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 
John Smith to Jefferson, August 8, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 

^Wilkinson to Smith, June 17, 1806; Jefferson MSS. 

^Wilkinson to Dearborn, September 8, 1806; Annals of Con- 
gress, 1807-08, Ap., p. 568. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 123 

up, I shall endeavor to procure about four or five hun- 
dred dragoons and mounted militia from the two terri- 
tories. ... A blow once struck, it would appear 
expedient that we should make every advantage of it ; and 
if men and means are furnished I will soon plant our 
standards on the left bank of Grand River." 

The "designs of the Spaniard" must have been 
seen at a glance, for at no moment was the march 
of the militia discouraged. Moreover, to have spoken 
of designs was deliberate and calculated to work on the 
fears of the Government ; he had assumed the extraor- 
dinary role he was to play to the end. While inditing 
this to Dearborn he was making arrangements with 
Governor Meade for the volunteers of Mississippi Ter- 
ritory to join him, and giving orders for the strength- 
ening of various posts. Pointe Coupee was to be re- 
enforced with seventy-five men, which number, with a 
detachment of militia, he thought sufficient to capture 
the Spanish Governor, Grand Pre, with his garrison in 
Baton Rouge. Two hundred militia were to be added 
to the force on the Tombigbee, and the commander was 
to be ready to invest Mobile, while another body was 
to make a feint on Pensacola to prevent reenforcements 
being sent to the former. These instructions given, 
Wilkinson started for the front via Rapides on the Red 
River, at which place Claiborne awaited him. On the 
nineteenth the General appeared. He then addressed 
the Governor, discussing the menacing attitude of 
Spain, and advising the issuance of a proclamation 
interdicting intercourse between the contending parties, 
save as regulated under passports. He argued that this 
was warranted because of the vigorous policy pursued 



124 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

by the enemy in permitting no one to pass to Nacog- 
doches unless known to be attached to Spain. Through 
this system of intercourse they were advised of all our 
plans, while we remained ignorant of theirs. Next he 
asked for the troops in New Orleans and every militia- 
man to be spared, and he wanted them to assemble at 
Natchitoches early in October.^ Claiborne replied the 
same day that he could not issue the proclamation for 
fear of retaliatory measures being pursued by West 
Florida ; the same effect, he thought, might be produced 
by prohibiting communications through Natchitoches, 
the only open route. Wilkinson could close this by 
issuing an order to prevent the passage of provisions 
to the Spaniards. As to the militia, the Governor 
promised a force of four hundred ; the rest, because of 
the nature of the country to be defended, were to be 
reserved for emergencies.^ Claiborne's steps had been 
taken with a view to war, and he urged upon the Gen- 
eral that "no time ought to be lost in preparing to vin- 
dicate the national rights." 

The inhabitants of the rural districts thought like- 
wise. They came with such alacrity that in one in- 
stance a call for one hundred volunteers was answered 
by two hundred and fifteen. October 3d was the day 
appointed for the general rendezvous at Natchitoches, 
the headquarters of the American army, which place 
Wilkinson reached September 22d, two weeks having 
been spent on a journey accomplished in three days and 
a half on his return. If Claiborne and the people were 

^Journal, pp. 285-288. 
^Journal, pp. 289-29Q. 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 125 

chafing under delay and were eager to drive back the 
Dons, the commander of the army was still moving 
leisurely. The day Wilkinson left Rapides the Gov- 
ernor started for New Orleans, and the evening of 
October 6th reentered his capital, where things were in 
a stir of excitement. The news that war was im- 
pending was hailed with enthusiasm. The Orleans 
Gazette, the leading journal of the city and the mouth- 
piece of the Americans, came out in a long article, 
which, after having announced that General Wilkinson 
had gone to the frontier, gave vent to pure revolu- 
tionary sentiment : — 

"We are happy to learn that the Government has at 
length issued positive orders to repel the aggressions of 
our enemies by force. We have indeed suffered from 
them, almost beyond human endurance. Their intrigues 
to disturb the repose of this country ; their maintaining 
possession of our territory between the Mississippi and 
Perdido for upwards of two years ; their outrageous con- 
duct towards our citizens on the banks of the Tombig- 
bee ; — these and a thousand other injuries and insults de- 
mand instant redress. ... If the enemy be forced to re- 
cross the Sabine, he must be driven still farther ; for it 
would be idle to suffer him to remain there quietly until he 
received reinforcements from the Southern provinces, 
which could easily be furnished him, inasmuch as the route 
from Natchitoches to Mexico is clear, plain, and open ; and 
the country through which it passes well stored with cattle 
and forage. How it may be proper to pursue the enemy 
is a question of policy for our Government to decide. On 
this we may sincerely rely that our President, who had 
so large a share in accomplishing the independence of the 
United States, will seize with eagerness and exultation 
an honorable occasion that may offer for conferring on 
our oppressed Spanish brethren in Mexico those inestim- 
able blessings of freedom which we ourselves enjoy. 



126 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

. . . Gallant Louisianians ! now is the time to distin- 
guish yourselves. . . . Should the generous efforts 
of our Government to establish a free, independent repub- 
lican empire in Mexico be successful, how fortunate, how 
enviable would be the situation in New Orleans! The 
deposit at once of the countless treasures of the South, and 
the inexhaustible fertility of the Western States, we 
would soon rival and outshine the most opulent cities of 
the world/" 

This language seems none the less remarkable when 
we know that it came from the pen of Editor Bradford, 
who, a few weeks later, was throttled by Wilkinson on 
a charge of misprision of treason against the United 
States. He was a coadjutor of Burr, to whose enter- 
prise he doubtless referred when he wrote that the 
President would seize with eagerness and exultation an 
honorable occasion "for conferring on our oppressed 
Spanish brethren in Mexico those inestimable blessings 
of freedom which we ourselves enjoy." The document 
truly exhibits the underlying motives in all great 
revolutionary movements — the vindication of rights, 
the freeing of oppressed peoples, and finally the mate- 
rial reward. If war with Spain was avoided for almost 
a century, it was not for lack of moral support that it 
failed in 1806; nor does this admission do justice to 
the revolutionary audience that applauded the senti- 
ments uttered by the Orleans Gazette, nor to the men 
who hurried to arms at the call of danger. 

From Fort Adams and Natchez came the news that 
every preparation was being made to repel the Spanish 
encroachments, and that all the regular troops had 

^Orleans Gazette, September 23, 1806, 



THE CRISIS ON THE FRONTIER 127 

marched under Captain Sparks for Natchitoches. 
Major Ferdinand L. Claiborne was expected to pass 
toward the frontier at any hour at the head of the 
Mississippi miHtia and Captain Farrar's dragoons/ 
October 8th Claiborne informed the Secretary of War 
that the miHtia from the frontier counties, more than 
five hundred strong, had reported at Natchitoches, and 
that a detachment of one hundred regulars with miH- 
tary stores would set out in a few days from New 
Orleans.^ Thus the American Army in the West 
rapidly concentrated at the old French trading post. 
The temper of the volunteers was no longer questioned. 
Claiborne wrote Dearborn on the twelfth that he was 
surprised at the readiness with which the ancient Lou- 
isianians took up arms. He conveyed also the intelli- 
gence that Wilkinson had written in his last letter 
(dated September 25th) that unless his orders were 
countermanded he "would soon have a meeting with 
the Spaniards."' It looked as though the fate of the 
nation as to peace or war hung on Wilkinson's word. 
This was the war which was to have called Burr's 
expedition into open array. Senator Adair avowed 
that "on this war taking place he [Burr] calculated 
with certainty, as well from the policy of the measure 
at the time, as from the positive assurances of Wilkin- 
son, who seemed to have the power to force it in his 
hands."* Wilkinson had gone further in his confidence 
with Adair, and, after the failure of the conspiracy, 

^Orleans Gazette, October 3, 1806. 
Journal, p. 305. 
^Journal, p. 311. 
•Letter of General Adair, dated Washington City, March 4, 



-1- 



128 THE AARON BURR CONSPIRACY 

attempted to disparage his character, accusing the Ken- 
tuckian of having gone to New Orleans in the fall of 
1806 in the "dark." ^ Adair retaliated, quoting from 
the General's letters. In answer to a question in Adair's 
correspondence of January 27th — 'Tray how far is it, 
and what kind of way from St. Louis to Santa Fe, and 
from thence to Mexico?" ^ — Wilkinson wrote: 

''Do you ktiow that I have reserved these places for 
my own triumphal entry, that I have been reconnoitering 
and exploring the route for sixteen years ; that I not only 
know the way, but all the difficulties and how to surmount 
them? I wish we could get leave, Mexico would soon 
be ours." 

More significant is his letter of September 28th 
from Natchitoches, in which Adair was assured that 
within six or eight days the sword would be drawn : 

"The time long looked for by many and wished for 
by more, has now arrived for subverting the Spanish 
government in Mexico. Be you ready and join me; we 
will want little more than light-armed troops with a few 

More will be done by marching than fighting; 

5,000 men will give us to Rio ; 10,000 to ; 

we must here divide our army into three parts and will 
then require 30,000 men to conquer the whole of the prov- 
inces of Mexico. We cannot fail of success."^ 

Adair challenged the President to look into Wilkin- 
son's conduct: "The Executive of the United Statr-^ 

^Wilkinson's Letter, Palladium, May 21, 1807. 

'Wilkinson's Memoirs, ii., Ap. Ixxvii. 

'Letter to Editor Bradford of the Orleans Gazette, ? ^olished 
June 16, 1807; copied in the Palladium for July i6th. The blanks 
are in the copy. 






